Airline making heavyset flyers buy extra seat
Southwest policy doesn't sit well with 300-pound dentist
Sunday, March 13, 2005

By Dan Fitzpatrick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

All Murrysville dentist Michael Gigliotti wanted was a relatively cheap,
last-minute flight from his mother's house in Florida to a natural-gas
auction in Texas.

Daniel Marsula, Post-Gazette

But a $552 bill for the late-February trip quickly went up when a
late-boarding passenger complained he could not fit in the seat next to
the
5-11, 300-pound Gigliotti. A supervisor from Southwest Airlines boarded
the
plane, crouched next to Gigliotti and said he would have to pay for a
second seat on the return flight, claiming the dentist's large frame
would
not fit entirely in the 17-inch-wide space.

Gigliotti did not feel humiliation -- just rage.

"This won't hold up in court," he told the Southwest supervisor.

"It already has," was her response, according to Gigliotti.

The exchange captures a touchy topic in aviation -- how to deal with
larger
passengers as the nation's waistline expands. More than one-fourth of
Americans are now classified as obese, and in an industry obsessed with
fitting as many people as possible inside a giant aluminum tube, airline
seats have shrunk to 16 inches measured from arm rest to arm rest --
narrower than an average-size computer keyboard and a tighter fit than
the
typical office chair or general-admission movie seat.

"The airline seats are simply too small for a high percentage of the
flying
public," Gigliotti said. "We are getting bigger, we're getting taller,
we're getting wider."

Southwest is not the only major airline with a large-seating policy. US
Airways, Northwest Airlines and America West Airlines all can require an
overweight passenger to pay for two seats but said they do everything
they
can to find a pair of empty adjoining seats on the plane at no additional
charge. Midwest Connect, which serves Pittsburgh from Milwaukee, requires
that passengers unable to fit in one seat buy two; if there are other
seats
available on the same flight, they will be refunded for the second.

But other carriers serving Pittsburgh, including United Airlines and
Delta
Air Lines, have no large-seating requirements. Hooters Air, an airline
featuring slim, scantily-clad "Hooters girls" as flight entertainment,
has
no such policy, either.

"We love large people," said Hooters Air President Mark Peterson.
Hooters,
which flies from Pittsburgh to Myrtle Beach, S.C., has never charged for
an
extra seat, he said, and fitting a larger passenger onboard has never
been
an issue in two years of operating the airline.

While critics of Southwest's policy acknowledge that other airlines do
the
same thing, some said Southwest deserves to be singled out for its
rigidity. "Southwest really expects its employees to enforce it, " said
Mary Ray Worley, a board member on the Sacramento, Calif.-based National
Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.

At other airlines, she said, "it seems to me their employees exercise a
lot
more of their own judgment in enforcing or not enforcing their policies.
A
lot depends on the prejudices of the employees involved."

The large-seating policy is nothing new for the Dallas low-fare carrier,
considered one of the industry's most successful companies, having made a
profit 31 years in a row. It initiated a "customer of size" policy in
1980,
requiring a larger passenger unable to fit in one seat to pay for two.
But
the airline, saying it could no longer ignore complaints from slimmer
passengers, began enforcing the policy more vigilantly in 2002, requiring
passengers to pay for the extra space even if others were available on
the
same flight. A refund is made available if the flight takes off with
empty
seats.

Each case is a judgment call. There are no scales at the check-in
counter.
The test appears to be whether a passenger can sit in one seat without
lifting the armrest.

The increase in enforcement, leaked in a 2002 memo from Southwest
President
Colleen Barrett, sparked a few lawsuits and criticism from fat acceptance
groups as well as jokes from NBC "Tonight Show" comedian Jay Leno.

The negative attention was unusual for Southwest, used to glowing PR.
Leno,
in one of his monologues, stuck it to the Texas company, saying, "Boy,
Southwest is cracking down on overweight passengers. Now any fat people
standing in front of the terminal for more than 15 minutes will be
towed."
In another joke, he said Southwest had "been overstating each passenger's
weight by 80 pounds so they can sell more fat a.s seats."

Southwest spokesman Ed Stewart attributed the controversy to
"entertainment
value." He mentioned the jokes from Leno and said "the reason you do it
is
because you think you can get a laugh out of it and it is something that
affects everybody." The constant attention has "nothing to do with news
value." It is little more than "people liking to make fun of other
people."

Most passengers, he said, like the policy.

"For every 10 letters you get, nine of them will say they did not enjoy
their flight because someone was sitting on them." Stewart said.

A few, though, were upset enough to sue.

New Hampshire businesswoman Nadine Thompson filed a lawsuit last year
claiming she had no problem fitting into a Southwest seat but still was
asked to pay for a second seat on a Manchester, N.H.-Chicago flight. When
she refused, she was escorted from the plane, according to her lawsuit.

Another woman in Spokane, Wash., filed a suit last year saying Southwest
humiliated her in front of other passengers on a Orlando-Spokane flight,
and that she spent the ride home in tears over her experience.

But no one yet has been successful in overturning the policy in court. In
2000, a California judge ruled that Southwest's policy was "reasonable
and
not discriminatory" after a woman weighing 300 pounds sued. The woman's
civil rights were not violated, the court said.

But "I still think it's discriminatory to make me buy two seats," said
the
5-foot-1, 350-pound Ray Worley, of the National Association to Advance
Fat
Acceptance, who often will call ahead before booking flights to make sure
there is enough room. "I believe I am entitled to the space I take up.
It's
a basic civil right issue. A lot of people believe it is within my
control
to be whatever size I am. That is completely false."

When Southwest began enforcing its policy more strictly, it went before
the
National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance's annual convention in
Atlanta to explain it. It did not go well, according to Ray Worley, who
was
there. If Southwest hoped to make the policy more palatable, "They
completely failed. ... The impression I got was they do not want fat
people
flying their airline. They don't want our business. They want us to go
away."

"What would make me want to fly Southwest?"

Airline industry expert Terry Trippler said his biggest problem with the
policy is its lack of consistency. If gate agents on one end of a round
trip allow a large passenger to pay for only one seat, then the gate
agents
in another city should arrive at the same decision. But it doesn't always
happen that way, Trippler said, and "everybody doesn't always have twice
as
much money for the airline ticket."

"It's a tough call."

Gigliotti, the Murrysville dentist, also has a problem with the way the
policy is applied. "I think there has to be a measurable standard," he
said.

"The standard should be, can you put the arms down?"

Gigliotti, who said his shoulders are wider than his waist from
weightlifting, claims that he was able to get his arms down "without
undue
stress." The company, on its web site, said the armrest is the
"definitive
gauge." But in a Q&A about the policy on its Web site, Southwest said
employees can still question the passenger "if a concern exists. ...
Condoning an unsafe, cramped seating arrangement onboard our aircraft is
far more inappropriate than simply questioning a customer's fit in our
seats."

Asked about Gigliotti's experience, Stewart, the Southwest spokesman,
said,
"I am sure he is a very slim 300 pounds" and it is "always going to be a
judgment call." But every time the policy has been challenged, in court,
"we have prevailed."

Gigliotti was not charged extra for one leg of his trip, from Tampa to
San
Antonio, but he was charged for a second seat on the return trip to
Tampa,
despite the presence of other empty seats on the plane, he said. He was
able to get a refund by calling a customer service number, but the
experience is still with him. He fired off a letter last week to
Southwest
calling its policy "arbitrary and capricious."

He vows never again to fly Southwest, even after its starts service from
Pittsburgh in May. "I just want the public to realize what can happen to
them if they fly Southwest."