Southwest Air will eat their words. By antagonizing the obese, the fat, the overweight and many thin people who sympathize they will loose market share. After all, if the governments statistics are to be believed, and that this segment is in fact huge (no pun intended), they have alienated a significantmarket segment.
Seems like yesterday SW was promoting goodwill and low fares with ‘kids fly free’, 2 for 1 and etc.
Good damage control, after this insult, will be an apology and then a reversal with special phat fares.
It seems to me that the airlines have always had a policy to sell a seat and a half for people who were unable to fit into just one seat. Would it not have been more prudent on the part of Southwest Airlines to just say they were having a fare increase for this instead of announcing that obese people will now be buying two seat. Is the head of this marketing idea still employed?