[doma135]

At the end of April, I flew from Amsterdam to Newark on Continental. I am gold elite and fly about three times a month mostly domestic. I entered the plane and found an obese man sitting on the isle seat and my seat was against the window. Once seated, I found the man was so large, the center arm rest could not be folded down. His body over flowed into my seat. A flight attendant passed with a seat belt extension for the large passinger but ignored me as I tried to get her attention. It took a long while but I flagged down a flight attendant and she hurriedly told me she would find me another seat once everyone was seated. I never heard back and the cabin door was shut. I stood up and a flight attendant whisked bye talking as she was walking. She said the plane was full and thee was no other seat for me. She never looked at me and just kept going. Durng the flight, the attendants ignoredme and even skipped my drinks twice. The second time, the big guy stopped the flight attendant and told her I needed a drink. When handed my meal, the attendant said "you ar welcome". as if she wanted a confrontation. I had eight hours and twenty minutes of torture seated next to this guy. He took up 20 to 25% of my seat. He was actually sweating on me at one point. The kicker was five hours into the flight when his wife came back to visit him from business class. He gave his seat to her.

I called customer care on my way home. I had three questions. 1. What is the polcy when seated next to an obese person? 2. Could I speak to a person in charge of the flight attendants to lodge a complaint. 3. What are my options should this hapen in the future. All I was told was that it is public transportation and that if a person can fits the seat belt extension, he can have the seat. I got no answer about lodging a complaint against the flight attendants. I was told there are no options if this happens in the future.

I find this very hard to believe. I called back and asked again. The customer care person looked up my complaint and said there was nothing else to talk about. He said it was public transportation.

Can anyone help me here? This seems so unreasonable. There must be a common sense answer to this probelm.

Don