On February 13, 2010, the staff of the Southwest Airlines flight between the California cities of Oakland and Burbank were struggling to fit passengers aboard a packed flight. There were a couple of passengers who seemed to take up more room than was safe for them, or comfortable to those seated beside them.
One of these was a rather scruffy looking guy, who though he could put both armrests down, and could safely buckle his seat belt appeared to be making the other people in his row uncomfortable because they were leaning away from his middle seat. One woman was leaning against the wall, about to doze off, the other was leaning into the aisle before the man sat down, but none of this was taken into account. Nor were the women asked whether they were uncomfortable or not.
Invoking Southwest's 25-year "Customer of Size" policy, one of the flight attendants asked the man to get off the plane. This attendant said it was at the request of the pilot, Captain Leysath, but Southwest has since confirmed that the pilot probably never saw the passengers.
Just as United Airways learned a hard lesson in luggage handling from musician John Mayer via social media, unfortunately for Southwest, that scruffy looking fellow was Hollywood writer, director, and comic actor, Kevin Smith. A young man with over 1.5 million followers on his @ThatKevinSmith Twitter account.
Smith Tweeted the following: "Dear @SouthwestAir - I know I'm fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?"
Southwest Blogs an "Apology" and Violates Privacy
After Smith tweeted his dismay to his fans, Southwest received a deluge of feedback via Twitter. In response, the company blogged about "Not so Silent Bob" making a crack about Smith's famous character in many of his films.
However, this blog response appeared to be toeing the company line in rhetoric, and though it expressed "heartfelt apologies," it never said that an error was made in asking Smith to leave the plane in spite of the fact that he can comfortably and safely fit in one seat.
The company also included a large amount of the director's personal travel details in their blog post without his permission.
Ultimately, Smith did receive a couple of personal telephone calls from a representative at Southwest, and detailed the entire encounter on his personal blog.
The Aftermath
Southwest did what most companies do in similar PR and customer service debacles. They threw money at the problem. They refunded his tickets, they gave him a travel voucher, they thought that more than made up for the face that Smith did not get to take the flight he wanted to take to Burbank that day, the disruption they created in his life, or the fact that they have not once gone back on their determination of his size being too large to fly in a single seat.
In short, what Southwest has failed to do is respect Smith as a person. In his blog, Smith is not asking for money, or further attention to a now extremely embarrassing situation. He is asking for public proof that he is not so large as to be rated as a "Customer of Size."
This situation underscores that successful businesses in the age of hyper-connectivity need to start considering their customers as human beings rather than automated money dispensers.
Alicia King - Alicia King has been writing for Suite 101 since June of 2007. For over a year, she was the Featured Writer for the Suite section about ...
