Too Fat to Fly?

I love Kevin Smith. I just love him. And I love his work. He’s a hero, an inspiration, and a helluva writer/director – and a big comics geek too – come on, what’s not to love? But he seems to have gotten himself into some trouble with Southwest Airlines.

I also have some voyeuristic history with Southwest as well. One of my guilty television pleasures a few seasons back was the A&E series "Airline." It chronicled the efforts (and sometimes non-efforts of Southwest Airlines and their customer service department to take care of those who fly with them. Sometimes the customer was the monster, but most times it was Southwest. It was a very unintentionally funny show, but it has always made me a bit tentative when flying Southwest.

This week, Kevin Smith and Southwest have come to blows, and I’m really not sure who the monster is. Southwest ejected Smith from a recent flight for not passing ‘the armrest test,’ in other words, both armrests have to come down while seated. After being tossed, Kevin launched an attack via Twitter on the airline. It hasn’t been pretty.

Southwest fought back on their blog, Kevin hit them with not only his blog but also an emergency SModcast. I hate seeing folks I like fighting. But as Kevin Smith himself said today, "let’s talk about anything else tomorrow."