So, I'm not sure if Southwest or the world wants you to know this, but...

…THERE ARE SEAT(S) FOR YOU, FATTY!

Southwest Airlines is now obligated to accommodate customers of size. Per their own policy. Whether or not you pay for a second seat. Did you know this? I flew using this new policy in March and am reporting back.

I do not know why this change in Southwest's policy isn't better advertised. I can't tell if they don't want to discourage passengers of size from paying (or thinking they had to pay) for a second seat -- which you can still do, and which guarantees that second seat without any potential confusion or inconvenience to other passengers. (Southwest now automatically refunds the money for that second seat afterward, rather than conditionally refunding based on the fullness of the flight -- another change.) Or if Southwest doesn't want to draw attention to the fact that they could be seen as potentially prioritizing customers of size over other passengers if the latter got bumped as a result. Or if it would be too disturbing to have suddenly said out of the blue: we're seating everyone.

It's a tectonic shift in policy, though. And (as I would understand it) puts the airline somewhere different compared to other airlines by making the promise of enough room an overt one, to be honored on the flight purchased. The change went into place on November 7, 2012, but there were no company press releases about it that I could find, nothing via company email. I heard about it through the fatty grapevine on Facebook (more here). Here is Southwest's new policy [emphasis mine]:

Customers who encroach upon any part of the neighboring seat(s) may proactively purchase the needed number of seats prior to travel in order to ensure the additional seat(s) is available. The armrest is considered to be the definitive boundary between seats; width between the armrests measures 17 inches. The purchase of additional seats serves as a notification to Southwest of a special seating need, and allows us to adequately plan for the number of seats that will be occupied on the aircraft.  In turn, this helps to ensure we can accommodate all Customers on the flight/aircraft for which they purchased a ticket and avoid asking Customers to relinquish their seats for an unplanned accommodation. Most importantly, it ensures that all Customers onboard have access to safe and comfortable seating. You may contact us for a refund of the cost of additional seating after travel.  Customers of size who prefer not to purchase an additional seat in advance have the option of purchasing just one seat and then discussing their seating needs with the Customer Service Agent at their departure gate. If it is determined that a second (or third) seat is needed, they will be accommodated with a complimentary additional seat.

Basically: please buy a second seat if you need one. But if you don't, we'll give you one anyhow. No being forced to buy a second seat, no being bumped.

I have been buying a second seat for years (and blogging about it), doing it on Southwest because it's the only place I can afford to do so, trading money I usually (but not always) got back for guaranteed space/safety/peace of mind. So this new policy is a huge change, and hardly seemed real when I heard about it. There was a lot of skepticism and worry about it among my friends who are quite used to fencing with the vagaries of flying while fat and its financial/psychological demands. It hardly seemed possible.

I flew to Los Angeles and back from Chicago under the new Southwest Airlines policy in March. The crew handled it differently each leg of the journey:

• When I went up to the gate in Chicago after a normal check-in at Southwest departures and told the agent I'd need a second seat, she just handed me a blue pre-boarding sleeve and did not enter anything in the computer. When I boarded the plane and asked the flight attendant for a seat belt extender, she mentioned that it was her first time implementing the new policy and asked if I had a "seat reserved" slip for the second seat, which you get when you buy/are assigned two seats (I didn't).

• When I checked in at the gate in LA, the process looked much more like it does when I buy two seats. The agent made it official, checking me into the system. She gave me the magic blue pre-boarding envelope, and in addition the "seat reserved" slip and a second boarding pass. (Pre-boarding: undeniably fabulous, but very necessary; if you board late it's quite possible to end up "with" two seats that aren't anywhere near each other, defeating the whole purpose of this stuff.)

I had no problems at all, although I did not know what to expect and did worry a lot about whether or not someone would be bumped because of me; I got to the airport very early both times. I think they asked for volunteers to be bumped on the first leg of my trip, but not on the second. It seems likely that not being checked in as having two seats on the first leg of the journey was the result of policy not being completely clear yet (it seems likely Southwest would need to check in the two seats for security reasons and general airline policy/head-counting). I was definitely more at ease in my mind when I was "official" and had my "seat reserved" slip as a defense. Without that, I would have been relying only on the flight attendant's memory and willingness to intervene should a conflict have arisen.

The reason this all worked, by the way, is because I told everyone up-front what I needed. I know I don't fit in just one Southwest seat. I know I need an extender. I put it all up-front. I can't tell you how the airline would have handled it if conflict emerged during the seating process without checking in about all this ahead of time. Or if it had been an insanely packed holiday flight. Or if everyone who needed a second seat suddenly...showed up.

What would that look like? What would flying look like? I do not know. With all the teeth-gnashing about this topic (omg-obesity-flying-blah), I still wonder all the time: what would it really look like if people showed up asking for what they need?

The truth is that even if they can afford it, many, many people do not fly because of worry about fitting into airplane seats. So many people do not even risk the discomfort and hostility, even if they can afford two seats. (So many people don't even try to find out. The lack of information out there is astonishing.) Many people fly with one seat, but worry terribly about it as they do it. Many people have terrible experiences, fat and thin -- the only people comfortable and free from the worry of deep vein thrombosis on commercial flights are 10-year-olds -- but there is a special misery reserved for fat people. Like the flight from Vegas when a man held up the plane to complain about sitting next to me, needing no less than four flight attendants to calm him down as I cried alone in my seat (what can I say, it was the end of a shitty trip and my emotional reserves were low). Or people who end up with hematomas and permanent scars from armrests digging into them.

Anyhow, Southwest's new policy: so far, so good. To me the difference between having to buy two seats -- even if I get my money back -- and only having to buy one makes the difference between not flying and flying. So I'm taking it. That's the bottom line.

Southwest has to be looking at their bottom line too: there's no other way. Complaints about fat passengers only grow, and this new policy must be part of wanting to hang onto customers, fat or not. But why not tell more people about it? What are they holding onto by not making it better known? Do they know things could look different -- or are they trying to avoid that? What are they waiting for? I'm not assuming the worst about their motives (quite), but I am curious. So much of this process of jamming people into airplanes is murky and shameful and full of conflict, as people's worst feelings about themselves and other people are suddenly brought to the surface. Is Southwest hoping to sell seats without having to remind us of that? Without ever bringing it up at all? Are they building a business for the way things really are but hoping we don't notice?

I also wonder: will this policy last? Be challenged? Be adopted by other airlines? What am I missing, thinking about this? Have other fat folk written about it? Feedback welcome.

(Illustration is Toil Girl Karla.  See more of Les Toil's work here.)

FLYING TIP: See a fat person in a window or aisle seat with a white "seat reserved" slip on the middle seat next to them while you're boarding? GRAB THE THIRD SEAT IN THAT ROW. The empty aisle/window seat, next to the emptyish middle seat. There will be nobody sitting next to you. Embrace the fatness!

Dear Airlines, You Suck

I've blogged about this before quite a bit, but I want to note again that in practice the Great Travel Compromise--paying for two seats as a passenger of size--sucks. It sucks. If you don't have unlimited funds, you are fucked.

I have been wrestling with travel plans for a trip to a city about 16 hours away by car (I don't have one). Looking at buses, trains, and planes, I have the following options, ranked in order of least desirable (5) to most (1), where X = a certain amount of travel money:

5. two-day bus ride with night sleeping in Penn Station (one seat) (1/2 X)
4. two-day train ride with night sleeping in Penn Station (one seat) (1/2 X)
3. flights to "nearby" cities with (coming) five-hr drive and (going) one-day drive/overnight stay added (two seats) (X)
2. flight to location (one seat) (X)
1. flight to location (two seats) (2 X)

Which leaves the winner:

5.
4.
3. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >
2.
1.

--two seats on Southwest, with an additional 30 hours of travel added, available only (note) due to the generosity of a friend.

There is an airline (options 1 and 2) that flies directly to the city in question, which you would think--option 2, I mean--would be the best, but if there are no empty seats to put next to my seat assignment (on a smaller plane than normal), I will be required to buy an additional seat and/or be bumped. A chance on which I cannot afford to gamble. If I had the funds (well over $1,000) I could avail myself of option 1 outright. (Note: I called this airline to tell them they were losing my travel dollars.)

So Southwest it is. I would prefer at this point (kevinsmith) to not fly them just to make a point, but I am forced to accept the situation. As ever. I am gambling on getting my money back from my second seat, money which is out of my pocket and in Southwest's for the month regardless. This will happen if there are any empty seats/seats occupied by airlines staff, but I cannot count on it.

I feel squozed. I am squozed.

If I were feeling riskier I might actually try option 2--which would make sense, yes--flying to where you are going? omgnoway--and hope that there was room for me, but I am not willing to risk the safety and comfort of myself and other passengers, nor the potential hassle and humiliation for myself.

So I pay for my size with thirty travel hours. 30 hours or two times as many travel dollars.

As a large person, I accept the travel compromise--barely. Fitfully. I understand that I am lucky to even grapple with the problem. But I feel that it's important to illuminate what the dilemma looks like in situ. It sucks.

on the Kevin Smith situation

About two months ago I posted a blog entry here about my experiences with Southwest Airlines. I boycotted Southwest for years after it became the first airline to actually enforce the written all-airlines' policy of making customers of size buy an extra seat, but I've come to appreciate SW and the no-fuss way I can handle travel with them as a person who buys two seats. (The point of that piece being that my experience with them exists in contrast to other airlines, which have less practice enforcing these rules.)

A person who buys two seats: this situation requires a fundamental compromise on the passenger's part. After one last humiliating experience on United, when a customer held up the plane to complain about me to a cadre of clucking gate agents, I decided to never put myself through that again, and I now buy two seats whenever I travel on a plane, which I do not think I should have to do. When you buy transportation, you are buying passage, not real estate for the duration, and the implications in the idea that we should pay based on space are alarming for everyone. But I have reached détente with the situation. Budgeting for the second seat (and hoping for a refund on its cost) is part of how I plan for travel.

Kevin Smith, however, exists in the extremely well-populated segment of the American traveling public who are big but not big enough to be forced to engage with the second-seat policy--usually. Smith obviously bumped into it this weekend.

You can hear his version of the events here on the relevant Smodcast ("Go Fuck Yourself, Southwest Airlines"), but the gist is: Smith switched to standby for an earlier flight than the one(s) he had purchased tickets for. In doing so, he let go of the additional SW tickets he had bought (he usually buys two or three), and had just one seat for himself. He sat down in a middle seat between two people and was just buckling his seat belt when he was asked to disembark by a flight attendant. (On his next flight he had two seats and the woman next to his empty seat was also large, and was taken aside to be told that she should have two seats and needed to ask Smith if it was okay if she sat there).

It's confusing that Smith was thrown off the plane at all: he could buckle the seat belt and put down the armrests completely, the latter of which keeps him out of SW's "definitive gauge" for being a "customer of size." That makes no sense. Something left him vulnerable to that decision by the flight attendants, who cited pro forma and vague safety concerns of "the pilot," standard issue stuff for SW's size policies. Why he was subject to them at all is not clear, except that maybe he just fit the profile (with fat, as ever, it is actually a greater sin to look fat than be fat).

Smith says once if he says it thirty times in his podcast that "he's fat but not that fat." "I'm not fat enough to have this conversation," he told a SW agent. "I'm not fat enough to eject off a fucking plane yet. I'll tell you when I am." He talks a lot about "the bar," the point at which you're so fat you can't fake it--can't squeeze into a seat. He says that if he were too big to fit in the seat, he "wouldn't come out in public."

He doesn't say this in a mean way. He's not making fun of anybody. He's eloquent about the way in which fat people have to think "ten steps in advance" about how we fit in to spaces.

And he's right, in the literal sense: he is fat-but-not-fat-enough to have run into this problem. The armrests could go down. He's one of the many many people who fly worrying about the two-seat policy and hoping they don't need it, or--much more likely--are ignorant or confused about it, but still worried about fitting, period. And to date Smith had been protected from the policy by virtue of money. He was able to routinely buy more seats because he could, not because he had to--he actually had the tool in hand (the discarded extra seats) that passengers need to avoid this situation.

But the line that he--that the airlines--draw. What if he couldn't put down the arm seats? What if he were "that fat"? What if he were technically a customer of size? What if he didn't have the money to do it? Should he have been tossed off the plane? Who does deserve that? When do airlines get to start charging more and pulling people aside? When is that okay? I think Smith's sense of chivalry was roused by seeing it happen to a woman after it happened to him, but that's how this works. What about fat children?

Maybe this isn't working. Maybe it's never okay and that's why this is such a mess. Maybe it's only a slippery slope with no solid ground. Maybe this is all about money. Smith's experience was able to light a match (most passengers don't have immediate access to a Twittering audience of millions) to show us how this is not working. The distinctions we draw are challenged and fall apart over and over. People get only bigger (and taller). Southwest has the most experience implementing policies about size, so what does that say, including about what's actually happening out there on other airlines? We're dividing people up based on a word we can't even say, to ourselves or others ("fat"). And fucking nobody's comfortable in a plane seat except maybe a six-year-old.

There are acres of things to address about this situation, but my feeling at the moment is that it's a good thing that it is getting the attention that it is, looming pitfalls in the arguments notwithstanding. I'm not sure the world cares much when this happens to a fat unfamous person, but it's a good thing when people have to resolve it with the power we accord fame. And Smith is speaking up.

I don't mind using the word fat, I don't mind knowing how much extra room I need, I don't mind asking for a seat belt extender. I don't like paying for a second airline seat, but I will do it--because I want to travel. I want to be out there. How many people, though, cram themselves in their seat, still as they can be and full of shame at every part of their body that bumps against the edges of the world around them? How many people don't even leave the house because of all this? How many people hide?

two seats

I was at the NAAFA convention (National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance) in Atlanta in 2002, the year that Southwest Airlines began enforcing their policy of making large--I think specifically "obese"--passengers pay for an extra seat if deemed necessary by their staff. It was the first time an airline had done this, although (as I understand it) most airlines had/have such policies in place, just not overtly enforced at that point. The clueless way the Southwest rep handled the press conference, as well as my perception of the general attitude of the company, made me determined to never fly their airline again, and I didn't for almost five years.

Now, though, things have changed, the main point being that I have accepted the idea of paying for two seats. I'm not thrilled, but I am willing to do it, for the comfort and safety of me and others and for my peace of mind. The last time I flew with just one seat (it was on Ted/United) a man pitched a fit and held up the plane--take-off was delayed for 15 minutes--as five flight attendants and customer service reps clustered around him and he complained about sitting next to me. Never again, and I hope that meathead continues to dodge bad karma.

The funniest part is that Southwest has become my airline of choice and I am extremely loyal to them. It turns out that having taken the step early on, the airline is much better accustomed to dealing with passengers of size. They have practice at dealing with the situation, and do so in a quiet, efficient fashion. They don't pretend the situation doesn't exist, they just manage it--no big deal. Their flight attendants hand out seat extenders, no fuss, and you are given a ticket to put in the tray table latch of your second seat to eliminate confusion about the "empty" spot. The airline makes every effort to refund you the cost of the second ticket if there is any empty room or non-working airline staff on the plane, and do so quickly, usually in less than four days. I appreciate that particular gesture on their part enormously--it really changes the flavor of this transaction in which I cough up twice the normal fare.

Most importantly, you are allowed to pre-board, so that you can get your two seats together.

Together. You wouldn't think that'd be necessary, but some airlines make large passengers buy two seats these days, then fight them about the second seat. I'm not going to name names, since the experiences aren't my own, but I have heard more stories these days from people I know flying on other airlines who buy two tickets only to have to defend the second spot. Flight attendants--caught in a fight with gate staff, sometimes--try to give it away, ask to give it away, challenge the passenger, sometimes don't even let them board at a time when they can find two seats next to each other. I've even heard of people who bought seats giving up their extra seat with no compensation, at the urging of flight attendants.

This shit makes me insane with fury. Not to mention it's slightly insane, period (would you like your two seats together, or many rows apart, sir?). If you make passengers of size buy two tickets, you actually can not give away the second seat to somebody else, nor make it impossible to use. What is the point? These policies have to be clear right up front, and the customer shouldn't be caught in the mess as airline staff tries to be "tactful" and tramples all over customer rights in the meantime. Not to mention if the airlines are so concerned about other passengers' comfort, why aren't they ensuring the second seat is used as bought? Aren't they trying to obviate situations where people are squished together uncomfortably? More than usual, I mean.

There is a really nasty flavor to this kind of terrible customer service. Bullying and shaming and dishonest. Unfair. Grinding up people in corporate waffling. Decide what you are trying to do, airlines.

I feel have reached a state of pretty happy détente with Southwest. I make my good faith gesture of coughing up for an extra seat, they reciprocate by refunding me for the gamble if they can. It's not perfect--I had to concede something significant to do it, and, note, there are no frequent flyer miles attached to the second seat if you pay for it--but I'm just fine with it so far. Goddang.