REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
Just when you thought air travel couldn’t get worse, you hear one more hair-raising air travel tale. Was one passenger too tall to fly?
Brooks Anderson, 25, stands at 6’7″. So, naturally, it’s hard for him to fit most places, let alone a tiny airplane seat. But on a recent Spirit Airlines flight from Chicago to Fort Myers, Fla., the tight squeeze forced him to stand for the entire flight.
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According to Anderson, he couldn’t finagle a seat with more legroom, and the flight attendants wouldn’t let him stretch his knees into the aisle. Anderson, who found the lack of legroom physically painful, asked the attendants if he could stand, and they said he could. So Anderson stood during his flight to Florida, for two and a half entire hours. According to the FAA, it is not illegal for passengers to stand during a flight, as long as they are seated for takeoff and landing, which Anderson was. Still, the agency says it is aware of the incident and is investigating.
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Spirit Airlines has a reputation for being stingy. They cram more seats into a typical plane than any other airline and even charge for carry-on bags. But this debacle is partly due to Anderson’s penny-pinching — he didn’t pay the fee to reserve a a bulkhead or exit-row seat in advance. Instead he went to the ticket counter before the flight and was told there were no seats available. Anderson ought to have done his research — Spirit drops its ticket prices by cramming in all those seats, leaving only 28 inches of legroom compared to the standard 31 inches.
Luckily for Anderson, who bizarrely did not request a seat in advance for his return flight, Spirit offered him an exit row seat and waived the fee after hearing his story. (via ABC News)