Fat man shamed to tears by Southwest Airlines Options

[Hartmann]

http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=5627

Good God. They have a well known policy that if you are overweight and potentially take up more than one seat you must buy a second seat. 490 pounds.

If I was stuck next to this guy for longer than, oh, 5 minutes, I'd be irate. I paid for my seat, you paid for yours but you're taking up two of them. Doesn't seem very fair.

Also, this has to do with weight issues on planes. Every customer is assumed to be 190 lbs while pilots are doing their weight and balanced check. So without two tickets this guy is getting counted for less than half of what he weighs. They'll end up throwing on a couple of palettes of mail or cargo and the plane will end up crashing because of this fatty. (far fetched example)

[zetec]

southwest is also experimenting with assigned seating, instead of the sit-anywhere cattlecall they have now. sposedly shaves almost 15 minutes off the turnaround time, and thats how southwest stays in the black. (that and the good fucking deal they got when they locked into a gas contract at a decent price, but that's gonna end soon.)

planes on the ground don't make money.

[GOB]

i'm going to pull an impala on this because nearly everything i'm quoting is misleading

southwest is also experimenting with assigned seating, instead of the sit-anywhere cattlecall they have now.

true. in select cities.

sposedly shaves almost 15 minutes off the turnaround time,

untrue. southwest's turnaround averages less than 30 minutes, so nope.

and thats how southwest stays in the black.

i'm assuming you mean turnaround in general, because it would be ridiculous to think that an experiment in 3 cities is keeping the entire company afloat.

(that and the good fucking deal they got when they locked into a gas contract at a decent price, but that's gonna end soon.)

untrue. their gas hedges are revolving. they expire and are renewed several times throughout the year, depending on the supplier, but they're not even close to paying "market" price for jetA. the day southwest has their first quarter in the red will soon be upon us (if prices stay high), but the day they leak like a sieve is another 50 years down the road. american had been consistently losing millions a day for years after 9/11; a lot of their pilots were given 20-30 cents on the dollar when they nixed the pension.

planes on the ground don't make money.

true, fast turn around does = lower operating costs, which = everything they stand for. hell, even their EMGs take regular flights for business; i've been on the same plane with herb kelleher several times and have seen colleen barrett and gary kelly at all kinds of different airports around the country.