Southwest Airlines Solves Worst Part Of Flying

The modern airline passenger suffers many indignities. Being herded through security like cattle. Uncomfortable seats. Bad food. 

The most infuriating humiliation, in my view, is being plunked next to a fat person for the duration of your flight. A very fat person. A person whose bulging mass cannot be contained within his purchased seat, spilling under and over the armrests and intruding into his neighbor’s rightful territory. 

Southwest Airlines has solved this problem with a so-called “fat tax.” 

“Customers who encroach upon the neighboring seat(s) must purchase the number of seats needed. Customers should purchase the seats prior to travel to ensure adjacent seats are available. The armrest is considered to be the definitive boundary between seats,” reads Southwest’s “[c]ustomer of size” (COS) policy. The new policy took effect Jan. 27, according to SFGATE. 

If a COS arrives at the airport and has not reserved the proper number of seats, he will be required to purchase an additional seat at the airport. If an additional seat isn’t available, the COS will be rebooked. If the airline determines that the COS needs an extra seat after he’s boarded, the COS “may need to deplane for rebooking.” (RELATED: Math Teacher Put On Indefinite Leave As ‘Fat-Shaming’ Algebra Quiz Investigated)

Distraught woman says Southwest banned her from boarding plane at DEPARTURE GATE because of her size and said she could only fly if she bought second seat for $450 https://t.co/6FmUgVgmcP

— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) March 25, 2026

Some fat flyers are furious. 

“Southwest is doing it so often and so aggressively that more and more people are arriving at the airport with this tremendous fear or avoiding going,” Tigress Osborn, executive director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, told SFGATE. “I’m seeing so much buzz from people online who are watching these stories get reported out and are saying, ‘I guess I’m just done flying,’ or, ‘This is why I didn’t fly anyway. I thought I would use Southwest if I had an emergency. Now, I don’t even have that.’”

Kari McCaw says she was recently stopped by a Southwest employee at the ticket counter and told to buy a second seat for herself, according to SFGATE. 

“I guess I was a bit embarrassed. I was upset more than anything,” Kari McCaw told SFGATE. “You just made this arbitrary look at my body … I don’t have any hips, so I sit in seats just fine all the time. I’m all front and back, so I do use a seatbelt extender, but if you took my hip circumference, I fit in the normal airplane, 16-, 17-inch seat or whatever, just fine.”

One fat girl asks, in an informative video: “Can fat girls still do Southwest Airlines?”

Plus-size traveler blasts Southwest for gate agent’s discrimination: ‘Guess what, my fat ass did fit in the seat’ https://t.co/hgxD0E86JV pic.twitter.com/SBF8sg1a58

— New York Post (@nypost) March 13, 2026

There’s a grain of truth in these complaints. It’s entirely unprofessional — and even unscientific — to make airline employees judge a customer’s fatness at a glance.  (RELATED: Fat Influencer Looked In The Mirror, Didn’t Like What She Was Selling)

Instead, airlines should band together to create and distribute an official taxonomy of fatness. A Fat Scale, if you will. 

If you carry a “seatbelt extender” on your person, for instance, you’re at least a Medium Fat. If you’ve purchased a frappuccino in the past three weeks, you qualify for Small Fat status. Etc. 

Frankly, it may be time for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to step in. Being obese is already a sort of visual terrorism. Imposing your obesity on a normal person trapped in a metal tube with you for hours on end is criminal. 

Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatSandovalDC