The Bullies of the Air

I, like 1.6 million other people, follow Kevin Smith on twitter. He's one of the only people I actually take the time out to read nearly every tweet (which is a real feat when you consider that this is the guy that did a 24-hour tweetathon). So, when he was raving this morning/afternoon on twitter about a flight on Southwest airlines I had to do some googling to get the whole story. Thus, I found this story about last night.

In a nutshell, Kev Smith was kicked off of a flight headed to Oakland, California by the pilot who deemed him a "safety risk". A safety risk because (and here comes my favourite part) he's too big.

The internet is all a-buzz about the situation, mostly because Southwest airlines and Smith are in a twitter war, and everyone knows that you can't really get much more public than that these days. So, naturally, I have a take on this situation. A completely subjective take, but one that can't be seen as invalid for that. What's objectivity really proving, when there's clear targeting coming through in the situation itself?

As a student living far enough away from home that I have no choice but to fly back and forth, I know too well how airlines can try and mess with people. And I know how often they get away with it, because there's plenty of people who don't have any other option but to fly where they need to be. And I also know that those painted-on smiles can be hiding some pretty ferocious opinions about the people boarding a plane.

That really brings me to a main reason why I feel like I'm justified in finding this to be an outrage; I'm not a small individual. I've never had any need to buy a second seat, mind you, but it's very clearly there and it's very clearly an impending factor that someday I might be kicked off of a flight myself. The problem is that I can't start a twitter war, I can't make 1.6 million people pay attention to my situation. But Kevin Smith can, and it makes me very glad that he is.

They called the man a "safety risk"...to who? I can hardly even consider that he was a safety risk to himself, let alone any other passenger or worker on the plane. If he can buckle himself in, where is the risk? So here comes that question: was it just because he's a big man? Has discrimination against big people really been taken to the level where they'll kick someone off of a plane just for being what they deem "too big"?

Just over a month ago I was on a flight from St. John's to Ottawa. At a stop-over in Halifax a child, no older than 3 or 4, was sat next to me by itself. His mother was in the row across from him with an infant, and the father was somewhere towards the back of the plane. Had I been awake during the stop-over I would have certainly offered up my seat to the father. Unfortunately, I only woke up during take-off to find a wide-eyed kid staring me in the face. Over the next hour and a half the kid proceeded to throw toys, run rampant around the plane, and all-in-all make a terror of himself. But of course, no one said a word about that particular safety risk. The flight attendants looked at the parents with a simple" oh, kids will be kids" understanding and went about their work.

Honestly, can "safety risks" really be so subjective as to allow discrimination that doesn't even make any sense? I suppose getting enraged by this particular instance without having mentioned racial profiling seems fairly "typical", but why is it that Southwest is just allowed to be so blatantly ignorant without groups rising up?

Being big isn't a crime, and it isn't hurting anyone else. Grow up, Southwest. This isn't middle school, we don't get picked last anymore.