"Silent Bob" Thrown Off Southwest Flight For Being Too Large

**Midnight Mike** · 2010-02-14, 01:43 PM

14-Feb-2010

Filmmaker Kevin Smith, fresh from delivering a speech at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, unleashed his fury on Southwest Airlines after the pilot on Smith's flight from Oakland to Burbank ejected him for being "too fat to fly" Saturday evening.

"I'm way fat, but I'm not there just yet," Smith wrote on his Twitter.com account after the incident, adding that he was able to lower both arm rests at his seat. "I broke no regulation."

Southwest Airlines measures whether a customers too large to fly based on the passenger's ability to lower both armrests while sitting on the plane. If the passenger cannot lower one or both armrests, the carrier typically requires the passenger to purchase an additional seat or make arrangements on other flights that may accommodate for extra space.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/kt ... 7187.story

**NIKV69** · 2010-02-14, 10:27 PM

The Crew tried to give you a hint. Take it and shut up.

**Nick** · 2010-02-15, 10:02 AM

Man, Kevin Smith is one of my favorite film makers. But Southwest?? Maybe he shoulda taken off his trench coat. :?

**emshighway** · 2010-02-15, 11:14 AM

That was a mistake on Southwest's side. Expect to see a barb against SWA in his next film.

**Alex T** · 2010-02-15, 01:14 PM

Not Officially--But this is what happened.

He was not kicked off for being fat. He had already purchased a COS ticket, but he chose to give it up and go stand-by for an earlier flight. COS policy is that if a COS goes SB for an earlier flight, there MUST be two seats available. SWA did make the mistake of allowing him to board when there was only one seat available. Same mistake as if letting a non-COS board with NO seats available. The mistake was quickly caught and he was asked to be pulled off and was given a voucher-100 dollars and re accomodated to another flight that had more open seats. WN did it quite discreet but this Customer took it above and beyond and tweeted about it, which is why it got so far and high to our VP.

It was NOT a "you're too fat so get off the plane" type of issue that is NORMALLY the case against Southwest Airlines.

What i don't understand is, he claimed he was able to put both arm rest's down so why had he been purchasing TWO seats as WN mentioned he had been known to do. I don't get that at all.

Alex