Kari McCaw was flying with co-workers to attend a conference in Las Vegas last month when Southwest Airlines employees stopped her at the ticket counter. The agents’ message was clear — either buy a second seat for herself or don’t fly.

McCaw is not alone in her experience. In January, Southwest’s popular “customer of size” policy changed, and flyers have taken to social media to share their frustrations. Flyers report that customer service agents have singled them out for their appearance and forced them to buy another seat to be accommodated, something they’ve never needed to do before. SFGATE identified nearly a dozen viral videos from different passengers and spoke to several customers who described similar negative experiences. Many of them say they won’t be flying Southwest again. 

McCaw first shared her story about flying out of Connecticut’s Bradley International Airport on March 10 in a viral video. She said she felt profiled at the gate because of her size, despite never having to purchase two seats before.

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“I guess I was a bit embarrassed. I was upset more than anything,” McCaw told SFGATE. “You just made this arbitrary look at my body. … I don’t have any hips, so I sit in seats just fine all the time. I’m all front and back, so I do use a seatbelt extender, but if you took my hip circumference, I fit in the normal airplane, 16-, 17-inch seat or whatever, just fine.”

Pushed by an activist investor, Southwest is remaking itself. Within the past year, the airline has abandoned several policies that once set it apart from its competitors. In May, customers without status lost their ability to check bags free of charge. And in January, it abandoned its infamous open-seating policy, which had been in place since the airline’s inception, in favor of assigned seating. But that change also ended guidelines that allowed plus-size passengers to either buy a seat in advance and receive a refund later or, on flights that weren’t full, request a second seat at the airport free of charge. It was a policy that was long hailed as the industry’s best practice for accommodating them.

Don't let Google decide who you trust.

“For many years, Southwest Airlines had the most respectful and equitable policy in the travel industry,” Tigress Osborn, executive director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, told SFGATE in an email. “In January, they undid most of that policy despite over a year of organizations like NAAFA and passengers from all over the US telling them how those changes would create difficult and unfair situations for their larger-bodied customers.”

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The program had been in effect for over 30 years. But now, plus-size passengers who haven’t purchased an additional seat in advance may be required to buy one at the airport, and obtaining a refund is much harder. Samyra Miller, a popular content creator on TikTok who advocates for size inclusivity, called the new policy a “fat tax” — plus-size customers must pay, or they don’t get to fly.

Southwest’s indefinite description of the new policy on its site and how it is enforced has only added to customers’ confusion and frustration. And it’s led to several passengers being forced to buy seats at the airport, just because an agent decides they look too fat to fly.

“Customers who encroach upon the neighboring seat(s) must purchase the number of seats needed. The armrest is considered to be the definitive boundary between seats; you may review information about the width of Passenger seats,” Southwest’s Policy states. “... In addition, Southwest may determine, in its sole discretion, that an additional seat is necessary for safety purposes.”

Southwest Airlines passengers check in for flights at Midway Airport on May 27, 2025, in Chicago. 

In practice, the new policy has also led to high-pressure interactions at the gate and increased anxiety among passengers already nervous about flying. 

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“Since [January], there has been the worst wave of treatment of plus-size passengers that we’ve seen from any [airline] in decades as their agents clumsily implement the new procedures,” Osborn said.

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Singled out at the ticket counter

On March 6, Jessica Skinner was flying from Tampa International Airport to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport for a girls trip. She was already running late to the airport when an agent at the ticket counter slowed her down further by insisting she was too big to fit in her seat. The delay caused her to miss the deadline to check her bag and forced her to rebook. Skinner, who said she’s lost more than 200 pounds and doesn’t need an extra seat, had to borrow money from family to afford the same-day ticket prices.

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“The supervisor walks in laughing. You could tell she was talking and laughing with somebody in their little back area,” Skinner told SFGATE. “She walks to me, and she’s just like, ‘You’re going to need an extra seat because you’re wide at the bottom and you’re going to spill into the other seat, and it’s for the comfort of our other customers, and you won’t be able to fit.’ She was really rude about it.”

Kenny Slack, who was flying from Houston to Kansas City on March 11, said he also was stopped at the ticket counter. But he was told he'd need to buy another seat because he had previously used the customer of size policy.

“She explained to me that it shows that I had a history of having extra seats in the past and I said yes back when I was much much heavier over 100 pounds more than I am now … body styles change people lose weight and they don’t need the same concessions anymore and I also haven’t needed an extra seat on the airline for some time,” Slack told SFGATE in a direct message.

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Another customer, Meg Elison, took three Southwest flights between Feb. 24 and March 1. She said she was able to take her first flight without any issues. But the airline forced her to buy another seat on the second flight even though she had made it to her first destination in a seat of the same size without issue. 

“The supervisor wasn’t able to tell me exactly what the problem was. It’s not a weight limit, it’s not a limit of inches, it’s not a question of dress size — they just eyeball you and decide,” Elison told SFGATE. “I was really unhappy, and I was pretty humiliated by the experience.”

Southwest Airlines did not respond to questions about why its stated policy online does not inform customers that it may consider any use of the previous “customer of size” policy at the time of ticket purchase. The airline also declined to comment on the record on how its staff is trained to enforce the new policy or how they determine at the airport whether a customer will fit in the airline’s seat.

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TWU Local 566 and IAM District 142, which represent Southwest Airlines customer service and flight attendants, declined to comment on how employees are enforcing the policies.

The legal landscape of size discrimination

Osborn said flying for many fat people is already a stressful experience, and a policy like this can make it worse.

“Southwest is doing it so often and so aggressively that more and more people are arriving at the airport with this tremendous fear or avoiding going,” Osborn said. “I’m seeing so much buzz from people online who are watching these stories get reported out and are saying, ‘I guess I’m just done flying,’ or, ‘This is why I didn’t fly anyway. I thought I would use Southwest if I had an emergency. Now, I don’t even have that.’”

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Southwest Airlines customers line up to board in Terminal 2 at Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport in Oakland, Calif., on July 25, 2025.

McCaw worries about how the new policy might affect other plus-size passengers who may not be comfortable in their bodies. 

“I know there’s a lot of people in larger bodies who don’t travel or who don’t go out to restaurants or don’t try new activities because they’re afraid of something like this happening, so it can really affect someone’s mental health,” McCaw said. “Even on my TikTok, I read a couple of people’s comments where one person said she had an eating disorder, and this would have sent her into a spiral. Like, you could be affecting someone’s mental health.”

A stricter protocol for second seat refunds under the new policy is another point of contention. Though Southwest is still one of only two domestic carriers to offer them, refunds are now available only if the flight departs with at least one open seat. Passengers also must book both seats in the same fare class. Elison originally purchased a seat with extra legroom, but when the airline forced her to purchase an extra seat, the agent reseated her in the 29th row. The airline almost didn’t give her a refund. 

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“They sent me a really patronizing email, and they’re like, ‘Well, it’s not exactly the same ticket type, and you knew what the deal was when our policy changed,’” Elison said. “So they very grudgingly said, ‘We’re going to give you a refund just this one time.’”

When Skinner reached out to Southwest, sending pictures that proved she fit in the seat, the company apologized for not using “care and professionalism” during the interaction. Southwest did not offer her a full refund for her flight but instead offered a $200 voucher to be used on a future flight with the airline, which she said she won’t be using. 

“You can tell it’s like they’re using the same response for every day, for all the complaints they’re receiving, even though this happened — not even a real apology,” she said.

A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 aircraft is serviced at the gate at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco. 

Alaska Airlines also offers refunds to plus-size passengers who need to purchase an additional seat, but only if there is an open seat on their flight. All other major U.S. carriers either require or recommend that passengers purchase an additional seat, but do not guarantee a refund. Still, Osborn recommends passengers ask for a refund regardless of what airline they fly. A friendly agent or frequent flyer status might work in your favor, she said.

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“Fat people are being thoroughly disrespected by Southwest, and Southwest should be ashamed of this horrible lack of customer service. But this is not just a Southwest issue,” she said.

As a model for how things should be done, Osborn highlighted Canada’s “One Person, One Fare,” which ensures that plus-size people do not pay more than everyone else for travel. 

“Size discrimination is allowable by law in almost every jurisdiction in the U.S.,” Osborn told SFGATE in a phone call. “... U.S. law does not protect fat people from being treated however airlines want to treat us.” (SFGATE contacted several law firms, none of which responded to requests for comment, about whether Southwest’s policy is illegally discriminatory or whether it could be found liable for arbitrary enforcement.)

The passengers with whom SFGATE spoke differed on how they think the problem should be resolved, with one suggesting a hard weight limit and another recommending measuring waist sizes so the rules aren’t arbitrary. 

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McCaw said that on airlines that don’t offer refunds, she’s noticed flight attendants use more discretion to avoid calling out or embarrassing passengers once they’re on the plane.

“I’ve seen a flight attendant say, ‘Hey, I have some extra seats in the back of the plane, I have an empty row, would you like to move there to be more comfortable?” she said. “I’ve seen that on other airlines, a flight attendant is very quietly rearranging the plane without embarrassing anyone.”

She also said it was important that any policy not be seen as discriminatory.

“I would hope that it would be an actual policy with guidelines, so whether it’s hip circumference, something that someone could check in the privacy of their own home,” she said.

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Others recommended better employee training to help course-correct passengers more effectively.

“The fact that they are a major airline, encouraging their employees to use their discretion to discriminate against the people who pay their salaries, they need to rethink how they handle people,” Slack said. “If they are going to rebrand to be premium, they need to upgrade their planes/seats/employee training to match the other premium airlines.” 

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