Director Kevin Smith Booted From Southwest For Being Too Fat

On his way home from the doing a live podcast at International Bear Rendezvous in San Francisco this weekend, director Kevin Smith was booted off a Southwest Airlines flight out of Oakland after being told he was too fat to fly.

Smith was scheduled on a flight from Oakland to Burbank, California on Saturday. According to reports, Smith had purchased two seats for his original flight but at the last minute he went standby on flight with only one seat left. The end result was no flying at all. Smith took to his Twitter account to replay the incident. "I broke no regulation, offered no 'safety risk' (what, was I gonna roll on a fellow passenger?)" he Tweeted. "I saw someone bigger than me on THAT flight! But I wasn't about to throw a fellow Fatty under the plane as I'm being profiled. But he & I made eye contact, & he was like 'Please don't tell...'" Airlines have specific rules about obese flyers - many of which require a flyer to purchase two seats if they can't comfortably fit into one seat. Since Smith couldn't fit into the one seat, he was asked to leave the flight. "If a customer cannot comfortably lower the armrest and infringes on a portion of another seat, a customer seated adjacent would be very uncomfortable and a timely exit from the aircraft in the event of an emergency might be compromised if we allow a cramped, restricted seating arrangement," Southwest said in a statement. Southwest Airlines apologized to Smith for the inconvenience and offered him a $100 voucher for a future Southwest flight. Smith did not accept the voucher, and we're pretty sure this isn't over...

I had been following Smith's tweets from IBR and he handled the entire episode quite hilariously via his Twitter account. At one point the official Southwest tweeter began chiming in with profuse apologies.