Air Travel, Human Rights, Twitter Access, and Weight

The recent removal of Kevin Smith (of Clerks fame) from a Southwest Airlines flight for being too overweight to fit in the seat brings out many questions that can be considered in this course. The most apparent is part of a debate about access to air travel, weight, and what is fair in these sorts of cases given the tiny seats aboard airplanes. More interesting perhaps given the use of Twitter in this course could be the response Smith was able to elicit from Southwest Airlines after complaining via his Twitter account. The link for this post connects to a story that questions whether an average Southwest customer experiencing the same situation would get such a rapid response, if any. Intuitively, we suspect that an average customer would not. Included in this though are certain assumptions about access and the difference resources make. We all have access to Twitter, in much the same way that we all have access to voting (as long as you can get to a voting center or an absentee ballot you can vote, and as long as you get to a computer or cell phone you can tweet), but this does not mean that our tweets have the same influence, reach, or effects. Recourse in a weight case is interesting to consider as well, since it seems still a sensitive topic but one which people feel passionately about. The complaint is either that seats are too small for many Americans to begin with, or the complaint is that one pays a good amount of money for the seat if the person next to oneself is larger, then they get to take up the space they paid for as well as some of your own. It provides a way for us to consider what one is due based on payment for services, what one can expect logistically from minimal space, and what is yours based on payment (i.e., the expectation of a certain amount of space in a plane contrasted with the a plethora of body sizes).