Kevin Smith “too fat to fly” drama plays out on Southwest flight, blog and Twitter |
 See what happens when a celebrity with 1.6 million Twitter followers gets booted from a plane because of his size.
Over the weekend, actor and director Kevin Smith (a.k.a. Silent Bob and the director of new film Cop Out, due out later this month) was told to exit a Southwest Airlines flight that he’d already boarded after the captain determined that he was too large to fly in a single seat.
Smith, who usually purchases two seats when he flies, had switched to an earlier flight than originally scheduled. Only one seat was available. Though Smith says he could fully lower the armrests and secure his seatbelt, the airline still removed him from the flight.
Smith began tweeting about the inconvenience Saturday night and posted the pic above. The result? A firestorm of angry Twitter comments directed at the airline, which, to its credit, reportedly has been responding to every person who tweets @SouthwestAir about the incident. We hear the airline also called Smith, offered him a $100 voucher for a future flight and posted a public apology on the Nuts About Southwest blog.
As at least one blogger has pointed out, the whole dust up is playing out like a corporate case study in handling negative attention when it erupts in the social media landscape.
From the traveler perspective, it’s a reminder that the captain and flight staff ultimately will be the ones making the final decisions about your right to fly once you’re on a plane.
More celebrity travel….
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POSTED BY LORRAINE - MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2010
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