In case you haven’t heard director/writer Kevin Smith was kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight. Kevin had always purchased two tickets when flying because he says it is the “food-stamp airline” so he indulges himself. Last week, Kevin had purchased his usual two tickets, but decided to fly standby on an earlier flight in which there was only one seat left. He got seated, and then was asked to leave because he was too big.
Southwest (and most other airlines) have policies that if a passenger cannot comfortably lower the armrest or hangs over their own seat so much that they infringe on the space of the customer next to them, they will be asked to purchase an additional seat or if none is available, they will be asked to exit the flight and board a later one.
Kevin was incensed when he was asked to leave and began doing what any other celebrity who has a new movie opening soon would do – he tweeted. And tweeted and tweeted. He tweeted and his 1.6 million followers responded so much that at one point, his Twitter page was shut down because it had overloaded. My favorite tweet was “I saw someone bigger than me on THAT flight! But I wasn’t about to throw a fellow Fatty under the plane as I’m being profiled. But he & I made eye contact, & he was like ‘Please don’t tell…’”
Southwest gave Kevin a $100 voucher and issued not one, but two apologies to the man they had dubbed “Not So Silent Bob” (after his Silent Bob character).
I don’t know exactly what Kevin Smith weighs, although I’ve read online that he is about 340 pounds. He himself admits he’s fat, saying “Dude, I know I’m fat,” but insists that is not why he was thrown off the flight because he fit comfortably into the seat. He speculates that he may have been thrown off because one of the airline employees didn’t like his films.
Now I am about 20 pounds off my ideal weight and I have trouble fitting into those 17.25 inch airline seats, so I find it hard to believe that Kevin fit just fine. It also seems a bit suspicious that Kevin’s latest film Cop Out opens on February 26th.
Kevin has said he is never going to purchase tickets on Southwest again. My big question is what is someone as famous as Kevin Smith doing flying one of the cheapest airlines anyhow? Could it be that Kevin not only likes to fly cheaply, but also likes free publicity?
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