This story is disappointing. I dig Southwest. I fly their airline. I watch their reality show on A&E and generally sympathize with them when they have to deal with some real whackos. However, they seem to have a real problem with consistently enforcing their policies. Their Contract Of Carriage clearly states under the first reason for Refusal of Travel that they’ll boot you if you’re wearing offensive clothing. That’s fine. What isn’t fine is that they’ll let you get on a plane, get you part of the way to your destination, and then enforce a policy that could result in you being booted. They did the same thing to me on a trip to NY. We flew with my son, who, at the time, was a year old. Since he was under two, he was a lap child and could fly for free. Since he had just turned a year old, we didn’t bring his birth certificate and we were not challenged on the flight to Islip. On our return trip, I got into a heated debate with the check-in agent because I didn’t have proof of age. Eventually, she capitulated, but she initially intended to charge us full fare for his return trip because we couldn’t prove that a child who was clearly not two and who had flown without incident several days before was, in fact, under two.
Oct 072005