It’s understandable when airlines force passengers to buy two seats if they can’t fit in a single one. It’s less understandable when the airline puts those two seats in different rows. That just means extra embarrassment for the passenger when front-line employees don’t understand the company’s own policies. Yet this is what a man from Wales claims happened to him during a flight to Ireland.

The story came out as part of his appearance on the BBC program “Wales’ Weight Clinic,” as he explained what life at 518 pounds is like. When an airline assigned him both the window and aisle seat on a different flight, well, he could ask his neighbor to move over. That’s easy enough. It’s harder to divide oneself between row 15 and row 17: if he had the ability to divide himself in half, that would make life an awful lot easier.

Yet while the airline had forced him to buy the two different seats, employees didn’t understand their own policy. “When I got to the airport I had to explain to all the staff why I had two tickets, they didn’t have a clue,” he explained to the Telegraph: even though the airline’s own policies dictated that anyone weighing more than 20 stone (280 pounds) must buy two seats.

37st man forced to pay for two seats on jet finds they are rows apart [Telegraph] (Thanks, Dov!)

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