A plus-size travel influencer has gone viral after sharing her travel hack for securing two seats on a flight without paying extra.
Kirsty Leanne is a UK-based content creator with more than 115K followers on TikTok, who often shares tips and tricks for plus-size friendly travel. Leanne has since started her own travel service for plus-size women, called Plus Size Travel Too. In a video with 2.6m views on TikTok, she shared how she gets an empty seat next to her on “almost every flight” she takes.
“One of the most daunting things about flying as a plus-size person is how much space you’re going to have,” she began the video, which included clips of Leanne jet-setting to several travel destinations. “And with the airlines making it so difficult to book a second seat, this tip has definitely saved me so many hours of uncomfortable flights.”
Leanne then shared with her followers the one question they should ask the flight attendant when boarding a plane. “Do you know if there’s any seats where there’s two seats next to each other free?” she filmed herself asking the attendant.
“Maybe after boarding I can look,” the female flight attendant replied.
Leanne noted that her plus-size travel hack may not “work every time,” such as when the flight is fully booked, but it’s “always worth asking.”
“I know how hard it can be to advocate for yourself, but remember that you deserve to be comfortable too,” she said.
In a follow-up TikTok, Leanne clarified that it can be “difficult” to book a second seat on a plane because the “airlines don’t make it easy” to find an empty seat, as well as the pricey cost for a second ticket.
“The best thing to do is Google the airline and extra seat and see if there’s a policy that comes up,” she advised.
In the caption of her TikTok video, Leanne told her followers that “the sooner [they] board” the plane and ask for an extra seat, the better.
“It’s always better to ask so that FAs [flight attendants] are aware you want more space. They also may tell you to wait until after takeoff to move and will save the space for you,” she wrote.
“I also ask at check-in as often, they can change your ticket to be in an empty row,” Leanne added. “A lot of the time, however, I’m told it’s a full flight even if it’s not. If you get this answer, don’t be disheartened – people don’t show up or miss their flight, leaving extra seats.”
Many people in the comments section were grateful for Kirsty Leanne’s plus-size friendly travel hack. “I tried so hard with Delta on a recent flight,” commented one person, who tried booking a second seat. “They made it near impossible.”
“It’s not fair that people should have to pay more just to have a comfortable flight,” another user wrote.
These days, Kirsty Leanne is busy travelling the world, after she initially believed that she was “too fat to travel”. The influencer is currently planning a group trip to Bali with her fellow “plus-size besties” as part of her goal to make travel more accessible with her travel company, Plus Size Travel Too.
Many plus-size content creators on TikTok have detailed the challenges they face when it comes to flying, such as small seatbelts and tiny airline seats. This week, actor and comedian Jayde Adams shared in an essay for The Independent how travelling feels like “an endurance test” for plus-size passengers.
Influencer Jaelynn Chaney recently called on airlines to introduce a “customer-of-size policy” to save plus-size travellers from “discrimination and discomfort while flying”. Meanwhile, model Remi Bader previously went viral when she criticised Delta Airlines for its inaccessible seatbelts.
The Independent has contacted Kirsty Leanne for comment.
