Dear Southwest: Let’s Solve the “Fat” Problem Once and for All. Here’s How.

Dear Southwest Airlines: Your loyal customers LUV you because 1) throughout your history, you have always been an industry innovator; 2) your business model is to keep things lean and simple; and 3) you run your operations based upon a winning strategy of positive relationships.

But you messed up over the weekend with the Kevin Smith blow-up.

To be fair, once the cat was out, you were stuck in a no-win situation. The damage control you accomplished was great, but shouldn’t have been necessary.

The problem of seating obese passengers is not just yours; it is an industry concern. Now, Southwest, it is time for you to innovate once again, and be the first to solve this problem once and for all, and lead the industry in implementing a simple, straightforward set of solutions.

What you needed ahead of time were 1) seats designed and engineered to fit people who are outside of the norm for size; 2) buffer capacity for seating that is able to absorb the odd boarding event (such as having to shoe-horn a 300 lb. man into a plane that’s 99.7% full); and 3) an improved boarding process that boards the outlier-sized individuals to their seats first, as with the elderly, disabled, or those traveling with small children.

Step 1: Seat redesign. Design a bank of seats that is flexible enough to handle those that are either very large OR very small. With the help of SeatGuru.com’s seating chart for your 737-300 aircraft, I’ve mocked up one possibility in this modified drawing:

What you see, looking at Row 22, are 3-across seat banks that have been replaced with 2-across banks, with the modified seats being 50% larger than a normal seat. Each plus-sized seat would have an arm rest that folds up into the back rest of the seat when not needed. In this way, a plus-sized seat could be converted into two small-sized seats (~75% of normal size) just by use of the folding arm rest.

Some of the possibilities with this seating configuration include:

•  Two plus-sized individuals (perhaps a couple) sitting next to each other in the same row, comfortably and without cramping adjacent passengers
•  A plus-sized individual accompanied by either a normal-sized adult, or 1-2 children, seated next to each other in the same row
•  Two normal-sized parents, each sitting in either a window- or aisle-seat of Row 22, with room for 3-4 children in the adjacent small seats

Clearly, there would be a cost associated with retrofitting your fleet with these modified seats, but it is a minimal-scope redesign that could pay big dividends in the marketplace. (Especially if you lead the industry with solving this problem.)

Step 2: Buffer capacity. I have never quite understood why the airline industry strives so mightily for absolute, 100% load factor. If it is true that airline seats are a perishable commodity, do you serve your passengers well by filling the plane to the point where people are either 1) very uncomfortable, or 2) fighting over the last available seat? Would a food retailer insist on selling every last gallon of milk before he reorders, or would he have some small amount of safety stock in his back cooler? Would Toyota risk halting their assembly lines by using up every last part or material before resupplying inventory, or by failing to have reserve manufacturing capacity in case of a breakdown?

It is a fundamental principle of supply chain management that excess inventory can be a costly form of waste. However, the failure to maintain safety stock when demand is high, supply is interrupted, or the unexpected happens has its own costs, and can be a risk to repurchase intent.

How many of the modified seats (as for safety stock) would be needed on each aircraft? Do some simple gate surveys, for 2-4 weeks, to determine: 1) average number of obese individuals boarded per flight; and 2) average number (per adult) of smaller children boarded, when adults board together with children. The data should tell you how many modified seats you need on average, while not having to sacrifice too much on load factor.

Step 3: Boarding process redesign. If it is true that obesity is a disease, then it would make sense, once the plus-size seats have been installed to aircraft, to improve the boarding process by boarding obese passengers first, together with the disabled, elderly, and those traveling with small children. The obese and those traveling with kids are most likely to use the modified seats, so board them first and steer them directly to the new seats. Rather than singling the obese out after everyone else has boarded, this would show a certain sensitivity and level of service that should be appreciated by most large passengers.

Yes, I know Southwest has a business model based on lean uniformity with their aircraft. Unfortunately, your customers are not leanly uniform in size! Innovate again, Southwest! If you retrofit your fleet with some straightforward, one-time changes to seat configurations, isn’t that a level of customer-centered value-add that certain customers might actually be willing to pay for, repeatedly?