Passenger Gets What He Didn’t Want

June 25, 2014

in Portly Stories

I was heading home from San Francisco back to Phoenix. I checked in at Southwest Airlines and got, I think, seat B32. As I was sitting in the terminal by the gate, I heard a guy talking to a girl. His conversation centered around the fact that they both got “C” boarding passes and he didn’t want to sit next to “lard asses.” He used the term three more times in the conversation.

My preference is a window, then aisle, then the dreaded middle seat. By the time I got on the plane, no more window seats were available. So I took the last aisle seat; in the window seat in my row was a woman with a quietly crying toddler in her lap.

Then, as you can imagine, the boyfriend and girlfriend come up and they have to take the last two middle seats. First middle seat is between me (tall guy, but the arm rests are down) and the woman with the crying baby. Second middle seat in front of us? Between two hefty heffers.

So the girlfriend takes the seat next to me. And the boyfriend says to the two people in front of us – actual quote: “Okay Laaarrrr…,” and I knew he wanted to say “Lard-asses.” But he drew out the “Lar” sound and instead said, “Okay, larm rests are going down!” Then he pushed them both down and had to squeeze in-between the two heffers. I could tell that the two heffers weren’t happy and they complained a bit, but the FA said, “Sorry, it’s a full flight.”

In my row? The girlfriend went to sleep, the baby went to sleep, and the mom went to sleep.

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

RedHead0186 June 26, 2014 at 11:54 am

I don't quite get what was so horrible about this? The fact that the guy kept referring to people as "lard asses." But you did the exact same thing by referring to people as "heffers," (it's actually "heifers.")

I will agree that Southwest's boarding policy is a bit of a gamble. I recently flew MDW to PHX, got a C2 boarding position on the way out there and managed to get a window seat in like, row 8. On the way home, I had B19 position, had to go almost all the way to the back of the plane and got one of the last window seats. I'm not necessarily complaining, it was just interesting that a better board position got me a 'worse' seat.

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CMR April 30, 2016 at 5:31 am

MDW is one of Southwest's hub airports, meaning you get a lot of flights stopping over there to pick up and drop off passengers. On the way out there, most of your flight passengers to MDW probably boarded in PHX, meaning there wasn't a lot of "thru" passengers who stayed on the plane and there were a lot more available seats.

On the way back, there probably weren't as many people who were boarding the flight in Chicago, but probably a lot more "thru" passengers who boarded in another city and stayed on the plane prior to you getting on.

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Michael L.S. January 1, 2015 at 5:56 am

It's high time obese passengers and those with kids are levied some kind of a surcharge.

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Mike October 17, 2015 at 1:33 pm

A common-sense approach, which is never followed, needs to happen on all flights. Online bookings needs to contain the wording that any passengers over 250 pounds need to buy two tickets. Most of them won't and will show up fat and stupid, expecting to occupy a single seat. Just have a scale at the gate, if they are over the limit, they either need to buy another seat or get a refund so they can haul their fat asses into a taxi away from the airport. As you may guess, I have to sympathy for portly passengers who infringe upon the rights, armrests and seats of other passengers.

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