EXCLUSIVE: Aussie woman ‘squashed between two obese people’ on a flight claims overweight passengers are forcing ‘regular-sized’ travellers into painful, ‘weird’ positions – and airlines are too scared to do anything about it

• Aussie jammed between overweight US passengers says airline at fault 
• Sydney Watson says airline failed to enforce its policy about bigger customers 
• Ms Watson, who is a US-based right-wing pundit, said US in denial about obesity
•  She says all Western countries are avoiding the truth about unhealthy lifestyles

An Australian woman wants airlines to stop tiptoeing around obese passengers and make them pay for an extra seat if the size of their bodies invade the personal space of ‘regular-sized’ travellers.

Sydney Watson, who grew up in Melbourne but has lived in the US since 2019, was jammed between an overweight brother and sister who ‘spilled’ over into her middle  seat during a recent three-and-a-half-hour American Airlines flight from New York to Dallas.

Ms Watson, 29, created an online storm and made headlines around the world after she sent photos of her predicament to her 300,000 Twitter followers.

American Airlines at first brushed off the complaint but later offered her a $US150 voucher towards another flight. 

Sydney Watson sparked a storm after she shared a photo of her three-hour flight and complained about being ‘wedged between two obese people’ 

Ms Watson, who is spending two weeks in Melbourne to catch up with family, said her photos did not convey the ‘absurdity’ of the situation.

‘I don’t think it’s right ever to put a regular-sized person in a situation where they have their space encroached upon,’ she told Daily Mail Australia.

‘For them (a regular-sized person) to be touched without their consent and in my case having to contort in really weird positions to fit in the situation.

‘I don’t think people really recognise or realise how bad it was because I wasn’t able to get a full shot of how bad it was. But it was absurd.’ 

Ms Watson said although it is ‘harsh’, there is a ‘social contract’ people enter when they get on shared transport.  

That contract is ‘I am going to make my greatest attempt to not encroach on the space of other passengers, to not make other people uncomfortable’.   

Ms Watson admitted that sometimes this was ‘unavoidable’. 

‘People have made the example of tall people, I am a tall person I am over six foot. I realise it can be challenging for us to fit into seats.’

‘What are they going to do hack their legs off? 

‘So they buy a business class ticket or they sit in the bulkhead. The question becomes why aren’t overweight people, morbidly obese people expected to do the same?

‘I don’t understand why we make different provisions for them.’

‘My primary thing with what happened on the flight is that I had no personal space,’ Ms Watson said

Ms Watson asked the brother, who was sitting in the aisle seat, if he would swap with her to be next to his sister but he declined.

‘I have to assume it’s because he knew being sandwiched with his sister for a multiple hour flight would probably have been quite uncomfortable for them,’ she  said.

‘To have at least part of his body sitting out in the aisle was probably preferable to being squashed next to her and next to me.

‘They were probably anticipating or hoping that there would be a vacant middle seat which is why they booked the say they did.

‘My primary thing with what happened on the flight is that I had no personal space.’ 

Ms Watson shared another picture of her legs squeezed between the bodies that surrounded her

Ms Watson said that while there are a small number of people who are overweight because of medical issues the overwhelming reason is bad lifestyle choices

Ms Watson told Daily Mail Australia the $150 voucher wasn’t good enough and the airline should have followed its policy of making people who are too big to fit comfortably in a seat buy the one next to them, even if that means waiting for the next flight. 

The American Airlines website states customers who ‘do not have enough space to even sit in their seat and buckle their seatbelt’ are referred to as ‘passengers of size’.

The website set out that ‘any traveller who requires an additional seat will be given an additional seat whenever one is available’ but if there are no empty seats on a plane ‘that passenger may be required to purchase a second seat and wait for a new flight’. 

Ms Watson also said Americans were in denial about the problem of weight.

‘I think the biggest way of solving this issue is to stop normalising obesity,’ she said.

‘In a very small portion of cases there are people who are overweight for medical reasons because they are on certain medications and it is by and large out of their control.

‘I really feel for those people because they get caught up in these conversations.

‘Most people are fat because they make bad lifestyle decisions and to act like that’s not the case is not good socially, that’s not good for society.  

‘The simple fact is people need to lose weight.’

Ms Watson said a recent trip to the US Midwest town of Michigan was eye-opening. 

‘I couldn’t get my head around how many people were on those fat chairs (mobility scooters), she said.

‘The vast majority of people who are that overweight, I don’t think they are ones getting on planes to be fair, but that the vast majority of people who are that overweight probably got there by making not OK choices.’

She has now shared an email she received from the company on Monday, where American Airlines apologised and offered her a US$150 coupon

She believes that it has become challenging to call out the problem of obesity because in many Western countries ‘people are fatter than they are thinner’.

A 2008 study found that Australia had more obese adults as a percentage of population (26 per cent) than America did  (25 per cent). 

‘The body positivity/fat acceptance movements have tried to harness this shame and do away with it,’ Ms Watson said.

‘Which is why you see so much of this “fat and proud” type of commentary from overweight people. Although, I personally think that’s a “cope”.

‘I received so many supportive comments from self-confessed “fat” people over my situation. 

‘These people are not denying the reality that they’re carrying a little more weight than they’d like, and they’re self-aware enough to see how that might impact another person.’ 

Ms Watson said obesity is a problem that needs to be called out and tackled openly.

Ms Watson is an Australian-American conservative commentator with more than 300,000 Twitter followers

‘We absolutely need more truth in talking about this,’ she said. 

‘More people die annually from obesity related issues than malnutrition. 

‘It doesn’t help that our society isn’t structured around healthiness – we’re mostly sedentary, our food is full of chemicals and additives, going “to the gym” and “eating healthy” are considered an achievement.’

Ms Watson, who moved to America to make a living out of political commentary which she does primarily on her YouTube channel, said she had been accused of posting about the incident to get ‘compensation’.  

She said she was initially reluctant to make a video about the incident but has posted one in response to the furore. 

‘It’s not about being compensated for me,’ she said.

‘With a flight credit I would actually prefer to put that towards someone bettering themselves than me pocketing that.’

Thankfully she did not face a similar uncomfortable situation on her flight to Australia.     

‘I think I would have cried if I was in the same position because my flight from Dallas was about 16 hours,’ she said.

‘I was actually lucky to be sat next to two very, very lovely Americans. They were thin – they were reasonably sized people.’

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