Southwest Airlines passengers who may need extra space are now expected to purchase an additional seat ahead of boarding.
However, some say that even after following the policy, they’re still running into issues at the gate.
TikTok creator Sal (@journeywithsal), who uses his platform to share his fitness journey, said he had a run-in with Southwest’s “customer of size” policy while boarding a Southwest Airlines flight.
In his video, which has gone viral with over 2 million views, he explains that a misunderstanding led to the flight being significantly delayed.
“So I caused the Southwest flight to be delayed one hour,” he begins.
Sal says he followed Southwest Airlines’ policy for passengers who need additional space and bought two seats.
“I bought two tickets, and the tickets were under Getaway,” he says, referring to the airline’s vacation bundle program.
He says the issue came down to seat selection. While booking through the program, he didn’t choose his seats.
“Well, they assigned seats in different rows,” he says. “And that caused the count to be off at the gate.”
Sal says the experience was uncomfortable.
“It was quite embarrassing on the plane,” he says. “I felt a lot of shame.”
According to him, the situation could have been handled better.
“Southwest didn’t handle it the best, but it’s not their fault,” he says. “They did the best they could.”
He adds that the experience will serve as motivation moving forward.
“It’s more so a call to me to continue losing weight, get better, so I don’t have to buy two seats in the future,” he concludes.
Commenters Don’t Think He Was Responsible For The Delay
Viewers in the comments section thought the responsibility still fell on Southwest Airlines to prevent this from happening.
“Not your fault,” one user wrote. “Thats a system’s fault.”
Others said that if two seats are purchased together, they shouldn’t be separated in the first place.
“Tickets purchased at the same time should automatically be assigned next to each other,” a viewer wrote. “This game of forcing us to pay more to ‘choose seats’ or suffer the consequences is absurd. This isn’t on you. This is corporate greed.”
“If they have a policy that requires ppl to purchase 2 seats, why the h— would those seats be in diff rows?” one user asked. “YOU did nothing wrong, southwest did! I used to fly mainly southwest now I wouldn’t dare unless that’s my only option…literally only option. Sorry you experienced that.”
What Might’ve Gone Wrong Here?
Due to a recent policy change, passengers who may need additional space on a flight are encouraged to purchase an extra seat ahead of time when booking through Southwest.
The way Southwest staff has implemented the policy has caused backlash among the plus-sized community, with some reporting that staff randomly select passengers they think should purchase a second seat during check-in or boarding.
In this case, Sal did purchase a second seat, but it’s possible he either didn’t follow or wasn’t able to follow Southwest’s guidelines when doing so.
Southwest has stated that to purchase an additional seat as a plus-sized passenger, you need to add the letters XS in the middle name field on the second ticket, using the same first and last name.
Since Getaways packages may also include a hotel stay and car rental, it’s possible they don’t offer the option to add an additional passenger just for the flight portion.
What may have happened is that Sal booked two separate seats, which registered in the system as two different passengers.
BroBible reached out to Southwest Airlines via email for more information about this process and to Sal via email for comment and additional details.