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If you fly heavy, you'll pay heavy
By STEVE HUETTEL and JEAN HELLER
Southwest Airlines nicknamed in-flight snacks "love bites," first flew from Dallas' Love Field and lists its stock under the ticker symbol LUV. But the low-fare carrier is cracking down on customers whose love handles spill into their neighbor's seat. Next week, Southwest will make passengers pay for a second seat if ticket agents determine they can't fit into the one they bought. The airline says it wants to protect the personal space of customers sitting beside oversized passengers and ensure the safety of everyone on board. "It's a matter of comfort and safety," Southwest spokeswoman Christine Turneabe-Connelly said. "If someone has trouble getting into a seat, they're going to have trouble getting out of it. In an evacuation situation, speed is critical." But advocates for the overweight called the policy discriminatory and said airlines have failed to keep up with the needs of an increasingly obese American population. "They don't say you're buying 16 inches of space. They say they'll take you from Point A to Point B," said Miriam Berg, president of the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination. "The problem isn't the size of passengers. The problem is the size of the seats." The second-largest airline at Tampa International Airport, Southwest flies narrow-body Boeing 737s and offers only coach service. Primarily a short-haul carrier, the airline has increasingly added long flights such as Tampa-Las Vegas and Baltimore-Oakland. Travel expert Joe Brancatelli said he recently sat behind a passenger getting squashed by his next-seat neighbor. He has no problem with charging people more if they take up extra space but said Southwest needs standards for who qualifies as too large. "I don't want some 96-pound kid making a decision if I need two seats or not," said Brancatelli, editor of JoeSentMe.com, a business travel Web site. "It's a stupid fight to pick right now, especially without an ironclad approach to how you do it." The topic quickly became television and radio talk show fodder Wednesday after it was reported in the Washington Times. Southwest officials said the policy has been in place since 1990, but customer service agents had leeway to waive it if a flight had empty seats, Turneabe-Connelly said. But the airline sent an internal memo this month instructing agents to strictly enforce the rule. Large customers, and people sitting beside them, couldn't understand why they had to buy two seats on one trip and not another, Turneabe-Connelly said. Customer service agents have been trained to pick out passengers who obviously can't fit into a single seat, she said. The policy applies not only to very overweight passengers but to large people in general, such as football linemen and professional basketball players. Delta Air Lines and US Airways said Wednesday that they don't force oversized people to buy an extra seat. "We do not require these passengers to purchase another ticket," said Katie Connell, a Delta spokeswoman. "If they have flexible travel plans, we try to get them on a flight with another seat available for their comfort." Other carriers have policies like Southwest's, including Continental and American, which requires purchase of a second seat for customers who "protrude extensively into an adjacent seat." Northwest Airlines allows the passenger to buy the second seat at the same price paid for the first seat rather than a more expensive last-minute rate. Southwest will charge large customers the same fare for a second excursion ticket and offer a discount for those flying on pricey walkup tickets. Passengers will get a full refund on the second ticket if there's an open seat on the flight, if other passengers got on flying standby or employees rode free, Turneabe-Connelly said. The issue has led to a handful of lawsuits. Most recently, Cynthia Luther, who weighs more than 300 pounds, claimed discrimination and harassment after being asked to buy a second seat on a Southwest flight from Reno, Nev., to Burbank, Calif., in May 2000. A California state judge threw out the case, saying Southwest's policy was neither discriminatory or illegal. But Lynn McAfee of Philadelphia charged Southwest was playing to prejudices against overweight people. "By catering to that low element of people, Southwest does us a disservice," said McAfee, medical director for the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination. "We're not packages, paying by the pound. It's much harder for us to sit next to you than for you to sit next to us." -- Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report, which uses information from the Associated Press. Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384.
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