Southwest Commits Another Fat Faux Pas

Well, at least this time it wasn’t a fat famous guy like Kevin Smith with a million Twitter followers Southwest kicked off the plane. This time it was a petite woman bumped for an obese teenager whose parents didn’t buy her two tickets. The bumped passenger then called the Sacramento Bee and now you’re hearing about it.

In fairness the company did learn that booting fat people off would get them negative press. This time they kicked off the thin person and we’re sure – to their surprise complain just like bigger sized people do.

But as if there weren’t already enough details to make you cringe, CBS News’ Aina Hunter has her own.

From CBS news:

“We know this was awkward and we should have handled it better,” said Southwest spokeswoman Marilee McInnis, adding that normally the airline would ask for volunteers to give up their seats. In this case, however, flight attendants may have been rushing to make room for the kid in order to save him from embarrassment.

Southwest can’t seem to win for losing. This is the same airline that made headlines recently when it booted chubby blogger Kevin Smith, 39, from his seat because he had to squeeze himself into it.

Note that they called Smith a “chubby blogger.” Which would be like calling Barack Obama a memoirist.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting this Thursday, February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Michael Brito (Edelman Digital), and Tim Devane (bitly). Register now.