Southwest Airlines ripped over controversial new plus-size passenger policy: ‘Worse for everybody’

This change didn’t sit nicely with some.

Southwest Airlines’ well-liked “pick your own” seat perk isn’t the only coverage on the chopping block. The price range service announced a new measure that might require plus-size passengers to fork over further dough.

Starting Jan. 27, 2026, flyers who “encroach upon the neighboring seat” shall be required to buy an further seat in advance, CBS News reported.

“To ensure space, we are communicating to Customers who have previously used the extra seat policy that they should purchase it at booking,” reps for the the low-cost airline said in a assertion.

Those who don’t buy one forward of time shall be required to buy one at the airport.

This marks a major change from the current coverage, in which plus-size passengers can proactively buy an extra seat with the option of being refunded later, or request a free further seat at the airport.

Under the new mandate, the second seat is nonrefundable unless the flight isn’t absolutely booked at the time of departure, and if both of the passenger’s tickets are booked in the same fare class. However, the passenger wants to request their money back within 90 days of the flight.

If the flight is fully-booked, the flyer shall be rebooked onto a new flight.

Critics have been fast to rip Southwest, which has long been seen as a haven for plus-size passengers.

Tigress Osborn, the manager director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, deemed the overhaul adjustments “devastating” for plus-size flyers.

“Southwest was the only beacon of hope for many fat people who otherwise wouldn’t have been flying,” she lamented, per the New York Times. “And now that beacon has gone out.”

“I think it’s going to make the flying experience worse for everybody,” seconded Jason Vaughn, an Orlando journey agent who shares journey suggestions for plus-size vacationers on his web site Fat Travel Tested.

He analogized the makeover to Cracker Barrel’s much-maligned brand makeover.

“They have no idea anymore who their customer is,” the Southwest loyalist lamented. “They have no identity left.”

The seating coverage follows a string of controversial adjustments that the Texas-based airline rolled out as a method to bolster income and chase away advances from activist traders.

These included scrapping the favored “first come first serve” seating coverage that allowed clients to choose their own seats upon boarding.

Starting January 27 — the same day as the plus-size seating coverage goes into impact — flyers shall be assigned seats in advance.

In May, the airline also bagged the decades-old “bags fly free” coverage, whereby passengers have been allowed two complimentary checked items of baggage regardless of their ticket fare.

Critics claimed that ending these insurance policies was the fallacious transfer as they distinguished the airline from other carriers.

Even the airline’s own executives ripped the complimentary baggage program overhaul, claiming that they may garner up to $1.5 billion from baggage charges, but that they’d lose $1.8 billion in market share from people who flew the airline because of the perk.