Can you be too fat to fly?

Director Kevin Smith apparently was, as far as Southwest Airlines was concerned.

On a flight from Oakland to Burbank, the pilot apparently kicked him off the plane because he didn’t neatly fit into the confines of his seat.

Smith usually purchases two seats for his comfort, but got stuck with only one after he ended up flying stand-by to catch a different flight.

Smith tweeted up a storm knocking the airline and the airline apologized and also gave him a $100 voucher.

A lot of people don’t realize that many airlines have long had policies about very fat people flying, though they enforce these policies in different ways at different times.

While the initial impulse is to come to Smith’s defense-one has to recognize that the airline has a legitimate concern: the safety and comfort of its other passengers.

Airline seats are small enough, especially on the types of aircraft flown by airlines such as Southwest; sitting next to a jumbo human who is overhanging onto your space does not a comfortable flight make.

But it is actually potentially more serious than that: Someone who has trouble fitting into one seat on an airliner can pose a serious safety risk to all on board in the event of an incident that requires the fast evacuation of the plane.

For sure, Southwest probably should have handled this one with more diplomacy. But it is wrong to laugh at its basic policy (that a very large person must purchase two seats) which is a valid one.

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