Houston hair stylist Kenny Slack went viral on TikTok after describing an incident at Kansas City International Airport in which he said Southwest Airlines unfairly tried to force him to buy an additional seat.
TikTok screengrab
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
TikToks say Southwest staff tried to make a stylist buy an extra seat despite weight loss.Southwest said customers should notify them if they need an extra seat and reached out.Stylist rejected Southwest’s request for advice and said he’ll try to avoid flying them.
A Houston hair stylist has gone viral with TikTok posts about being “fat-shamed” by Southwest Airlines employees at Kansas City International Airport, adding to ongoing customer backlash online over the airline’s new “customers of size” policy.
The incident occurred before 7 a.m. on March 11 when Kenny Slack was checking in at the Southwest counter. He has posted three TikToks about it — including this week — attracting millions of views and attention from national and international media.
He says Southwest employees, in front of other passengers, tried to make him buy an additional seat that he doesn’t need after losing more than 60 pounds.
“I fly so much that sometimes I have to take different airlines depending on where I’m flying to, and I’ve never had a problem with any other airline at any other time, including Southwest up until this point,” Slack told The Star this week after a trip to Los Angeles.
“And I’ve also had flights that were booked for work prior to this incident that were on Southwest — I had to take one of those yesterday — and I had zero incidents with anyone saying anything to me there either.”
Slack is an educator for a global hair-color company and had just spent a couple of days with hair stylists in Manhattan, Kansas. A stylist of 19 years, he flies frequently for his teaching job, always as a priority flyer with special perks.
“I actually usually go through Wichita because I teach in Salina and Hays, too,” he said. “But I realized KCI was a little closer to Manhattan and it’s also a nicer drive to Manhattan than it is from Wichita.
“I haven’t actually flown in or out of KCI in probably, I want to say, more than five years. The last time I was in KCI it was the old airport.”
He said he pre-tagged his bag at a kiosk, then got in the priority check-in line. He handed his bag to the Southwest employee behind the counter. “She looked at my ID and looked at her computer and looked at me and said, ‘I think I’m going to need you to purchase an extra seat,’” he said.
“I told her, ‘Well, I don’t think I’m going to need to do that at all, thank you.’ And she looked at her monitor and said ‘You’ve had extra seats in the past, so I’m going to need you to purchase an extra seat.’
“I said, ‘Yeah I know, I used to have extra seats in the past. If you can see my flight history then you’ll know I haven’t had an extra seat in quite some time. You know it is possible for people to lose weight and their body types to change.’”
Slack said he’s been on a weight-loss journey since suffering a health scare last year. In his first TikTok about the incident, he said, “I know I’m a hefty guy, but I’ve lost over 60 pounds since Christmas.”
He told The Star that the employee went to get a manager.
“And the manager tried to argue the same argument, that I’ve had extra seats in the past and I said, ‘Yes, when I was well over 400 pounds and I needed the space, that’s when I utilized Southwest’s extra seat policy. But that’s not the case anymore,’” he said.
“And she said, ‘Are you sure you can fit in the chair with both armrests down?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I’m 100% sure I can do that.’ And then she said, ‘Well, I’m just not sure. I think we need to do this.’”
Slack said he pointed out that he hadn’t purchased an extra seat for the flight from Houston to Kansas City and hasn’t used an extra seat all year.
He had seen the complaints online about the customers of size policy change but didn’t worry because he was certain it wouldn’t affect him as a priority flyer. The new policy went into effect in January.
One significant difference: Passengers can no longer request an extra seat at the airport for free.
“We began communicating changes to our policy — which is in line with industry standards — almost a year ago and continued reiterating those changes directly to customers throughout the summer,” Southwest said in a statement to The Star.
“Our policy is well-defined on our website and has instructions on how to book a second seat at booking.”
The policy states that passengers “who encroach upon the neighboring seat(s) must purchase the number of seats needed,” and “should do that before they travel to make sure seats are available.
“The armrest is considered to be the definitive boundary between seats … Southwest may determine, in its sole discretion, that an additional seat is necessary for safety purposes.”
Under the old rules, Southwest passengers could proactively buy an extra seat and get a refund for the second ticket later, or ask for an extra seat at the airport if they were avaiable. Now they only qualify for a refund if their fare class is not full.
If passengers don’t reserve adjacent seats before they get to the airport and adjacent seats are not available, they’ll be rebooked on another flight.
And, if the airline decides after a passenger is on the plane that they need an extra seat, they can be asked to leave the plane and get booked for another flight that has enough seats.
“I had heard about the new policy — I mean, it wasn’t really a new policy, it was just something where they weren’t giving the seats away for free anymore,” Slack said.
“And I didn’t see a problem with it at the time because I fly so dang much (that) all of the things they were starting to charge people for, I get for free. I don’t pay for my checked bags, I don’t pay to be up in the ‘extra legroom’ seats, I don’t pay for any of the upgrades. I get it all because I fly so frequently. So, all the things people were yelling about with Southwest weren’t bugging me.
“But the way that they are allowing them to back the employees’ decision to discriminate against a customer at the gate is what is throwing me for a loop.”
His beef isn’t with the policy, but how the employees tried to enforce it. He said that as he emphasized that he had flown to Kansas City without needing an extra seat, “the manager looked at me and said, ‘Well, I’m just really concerned about the level of comfortability of the people sitting next to you.’
“I looked her dead in the face and said, ‘How about my level of comfortability with us having this kind of a conversation in front of this line of people trying to check their bags?’”
In his first TikTok he complained: “I have never run into this level of just pure audacity in … my … life.”
“So she said she was going to go ahead and allow me to go through security without purchasing the seat, but she was going to have to call the gate attendant and let them know that if I have any issues when I get on the plane that I’ll have to deplane or purchase an extra seat,” Slack told The Star.
“That’s when I stepped away from the counter. I was on the phone with my brother at the time, that’s why I didn’t record the interaction. But I immediately stepped away from the counter and made the video instantly.
“Then I saved it and sat on the video until I was back home in Houston, and that’s when I decided to upload it.”
In the second of his three TikToks, he told viewers “we need to work on Southwest doing better because Southwest, you need to do better.”
He reported that he got on the flight out of KCI without buying an extra seat “because I advocated for myself. I had a lovely time with the person sitting next to me where both of us had plenty of space.”
Losing more than 60 pounds in 12 weeks, he said in the video, “is no small feat. So to be blatantly fat-shamed at the counter in front of people, even after all that, when I never even needed an extra seat before, was just insane.
“I understand that there’s a time and a place for some of these policies and some people might need certain acccomodations, but the training needs to be better, the way they handle things needs to be better and they need to figure out how to do this without making people so ashamed and vulnerable and miserable in front of everyone else.
“I’ve seen so many people in my comments saying I am not the only one that they’ve seen this happen to, or I’m the first gentleman they’ve seen this happen to …
“But again, Southwest, you really need to do better because discrimination and fat-shaming and just allowing your gate attendant or your baggage-check attendant employees to throw their opinions out, especially when they’re not warranted, is so incorrect.”
Slack struck a chord and has been overwhelmed reading thousands of comments on his videos.
This person’s take is common: “If they are going to have a policy like that, they should have measurable standards and not just someone’s subjective opinion, the same way they have for carry-on bags.”
Said Slack, “There’s been plenty of other videos that have been tagged of this happening to other people and even people who have already prepurchased the extra seat for themselves and then getting reassigned with different seats.
“So this policy right now is kind of out of control, being left up to the discretion of employees who aren’t trained on how to handle it properly. There’s been so much outrage of similar things happening, so I know that I’m not just an isolated incident. I just happen to be the one that went super-viral.”
Slack did not reach out to Southwest directly, but the airline sent him an email this week, he said.
“We ask customers who may need an extra seat to let us know in advance of their day of travel so we can do our best to accommodate their needs,” a Southwest spokesperson said to The Star via email.
“Our goal is always to provide a comfortable experience for everyone on board; however, with assigned seating, adjacent seats may sometimes already be occupied.
“In this case, we have reached out directly to the customers involved to better understand their experience and ensure we address any concerns with the appropriate discretion.”
Slack was not impressed by his email from the airline, in which he said Southwest asked his advice for handling situations like this.
“You want me as one of your plus-sized customers to help you troubleshoot how to handle this in the future so you don’t get more bad PR?” he said. “I’m sorry, that is not my fricking job. That was your job when you rolled out this policy and wanted to adhere to it so strictly, so you figure it out.
“I guess I wish them the best, in a way. I know that I’m not going to be able to avoid traveling on Southwest 100% from here on out, but I am going to do my best to avoid traveling on them when I can.”
Related Stories from Kansas City Star
.jpg)
The Kansas City Star
Lisa Gutierrez has been a reporter for The Kansas City Star since 2000. She learned journalism at the University of Kansas, her alma mater. She writes about pop culture, local celebrities, trends and life in the metro through its people. Oh, and dogs. You can reach her at lgutierrez@kcstar.com or follow her on Twitter – @LisaGinKC.