A so-called “fat tax” targeting plus-size airline passengers has left travellers furious and “stressed”. Major carrier Southwest Airlines has found itself at the centre of a storm over its contentious new policy, which can require passengers to fork out for an additional seat at its “sole discretion”.

The policy change comes after 30 years of permitting plus-size passengers to request a complimentary extra seat at the gate, and reimbursing them if they’d purchased one in advance – but that’s no longer the case.

Customers will now only receive a refund for a second seat if their flight departs with at least one vacant seat, while those who failed to book ahead may be forced to purchase another ticket on the spot.

In a statement regarding the policy change, a spokesperson for Southwest said: “To ensure space, we are communicating to customers who have previously used the extra seat policy that they should purchase it at booking.”

On the airline’s website, the new “customer of size” policy states: “Customers who encroach upon the neighboring seat(s) must purchase the number of seats needed. Customers should purchase the seats prior to travel to ensure adjacent seats are available.

“The armrest is considered to be the definitive boundary between seats; you may review information about the width of Passenger seats. In addition, Southwest may determine, in its sole discretion, that an additional seat is necessary for safety purposes.”

However, passengers are far from happy. Influencer Samyra Miller took to TikTok to condemn the policy, labelling it a “fat tax”.

She said: “They’ve been doing this way before their little new policy was even supposed to go into effect because, remember, they kicked me off my flight in December.”

She explained that a Southwest representative privately contacted her after she spoke about her negative experience online, and said: “My primary concern with that whole back and forth with Southwest was for how they were about to treat their plus size customers in changing their customer of size policy.”

Samyra referenced the wording of the policy on the Southwest website but said, at the airport, “they’re just eyeing people”. The content creator continued: “There is no criteria that they are using to determine who has to pay for an extra seat.”

Describing it as “discrimination”, Samyra added: “It is literally just at the discretion of and fatphobia of whoever is working that day.”

In the comments section, viewers were eager to voice their opinions. One TikTok user wrote: “This is absolutely horrible!”

Another said: “We have a company trip in May and I told my boss to use any other airline BUT Southwest.”

A third shared: “I have a flight in 5 days I AM STRESSED I DON’T have more money to buy an extra seat”.

While another added: “This isn’t fair at all”.

Fellow TikTok user Sassa Ésmith uploaded a clip ahead of a Southwest flight and included text overlay which read: “Shoutout to Southwest for contributing to my traveling anxiety with your superfluous ‘customer of size policy'”.

In the caption, she wrote: “Spent my entire lobby time mentally preparing for a random gate agent to tell me I gotta buy an additional seat for a 40 minute flight”.