Southwest is charging plus-size passengers a 'fat tax' at the airport |
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.
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“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........