I agree with others. This thing is just completely sensationalized. I mean, this guy very well wasn't dying by the gate from freezing. It's an airport for crying out loud, they have heat in most airports last time I checked. And if he's prone to coldness, he probably should have brought a few extra layers of clothing or blankets with him. And frankly, he would have been cold and dying regardless of whether or not he paid for his ticket in advance. Pleading to get a free didn't didn't make him any colder.

Next, if he truly was dying, shame on his daughter for sitting there in Japan while her father was freezing to death in an airport waiting to get a liver. And please don't tell me that nobody could have gotten this guy a ticket. His daughter seemed to use her AMEX just fine to book his original ticket. Why couldn't she pony up for her "dying father" for an extra ticket that would have been refunded anyways? And if she couldn't, please don't tell me that nobody else could. Who is this guy he went with (his caretaker)? Don't tell me the who of them went all the way from Sacremento to Phoenix and neither of them had a credit card. PLEASE!!!

This jerkoff and his daughter are just out to make SWA look bad, it's as plain and simple as that.

That said, I thought SWA's COS/POS policy doesn't apply if the flight wasn't full? Why would they even try to charge him if they knew the flight wasn't full? I do think the gate agent could have been slightly more sympathetic, but from the tone of the article (which BTW the daughter wrote the whole thing so the view is obviously COMPLETELY SLANTED), this guy is probably a real jerk and if I were the gate agent and this guy really was a jerk like I assume, I would have treated him exactly like she did, by the rules down to the T.

BTW, this event just made the official SWA Blog:
http://www.blogsouthwest.com/2007/01...ortunate-event

And for further amusing reading about this, check out this blog:
http://digg.com/business_finance/Sou...nt_Patient_Die