Too fat to fly?

Southwest airlines made a hefty PR blunder this week by throwing sharp-tongued filmmaker Kevin Smith off the plane for being too overweight.

He naturally got straight onto Twitter and gave the airline a right royal bashing for what he saw as brazen discrimination to 'people of width' such as himself.

This is a tricky one. It was clearly stated in the airline's passenger guidelines that anybody who couldn't sit in a seat with both armrests down were obliged to buy an extra seat because it wasn't fair on the other passengers.

As someone who has found themselves on a long haul flight with somebody else's love handles squeezing into my dinner tray, I can see the thinking behind Southwest's policy.

However, I can't help thinking that given the truly measly amount of space you get nowadays on aeroplanes, it's a bit rich for the airline to penalise people for not fitting into the pitiful space provided. Anyone like me who is over 5ft 9 has to perform some kind of yoga contortion to fit in their seat - should we also have to pay extra if our legs cross over into the next space?

As the writer/director of successful films like Clerks and Dogma, I doubt Kevin Smith was trying to squish himself into an economy seat when he got thrown off the Southwest plane. I haven't seen any recent pictures of him, but I'm guessing that to be too flabby for first class, you have to be pretty big.

In which case, the question has to be asked, at what point do you draw the line? With people getting more and more obese, what should the airlines do about it?

Have special extra jumbo-sized jumbo jets for the 'big boned'?

Maybe one of those baskets at check-in that you measure your hand luggage in to check the size of passengers backsides before they board the plane?

Or maybe, just maybe, the airlines will finally decide to give people a reasonable amount of space for the seat they have paid good money for?

Yeah, and pigs might fly...