It all played out last evening as Kevin, via the twitter service, revealed that he was asked to leave a plane in his attempt to get home to Burbank from his weekend of gigs in San Francisco (he’d flown up there without incident on the same airline earlier in the week). In a very public forum, as the event played out on Twitter, Southwest Airline’s own PR department kicked into high gear on the service themselves, trying their best to do as much damage control as possible. But it was just too late.

Some select Kevin tweets from the incident:

Dear @SouthwestAir, I flew out in one seat, but right after issuing me a standby ticket, Oakland Southwest attendant Suzanne (wouldn’t give last name) told me Captain Leysath deemed me a “safety risk”. Again: I’m way fat… But I’m not THERE just yet. But if I am, why wait til my bag is up, and I’m stated WITH ARM RESTS DOWN. In front of a packed plane with a bunch of folks who’d already I.d.ed me as “Silent Bob.”

And, hey? @SouthwestAir? I didn’t even need a seat belt extender to buckle up. Somehow, that shit fit over my “safety concern”-creating gut.

Hey @SouthwestAir! Sometimes, the arm rests are up because THE PEOPLE SITTING THERE ALREADY PUT THEM UP; NOT BECAUSE THEY “CAN’T GO DOWN.”

Hey @SouthwestAir? Fuck making it right for me just ’cause I have a platform. I sat next to a big girl who was chastised for not buying an extra ticket because “all passengers deserve their space.” Fucking flight wasn’t even full! Fuck your size-ist policy. Rude…

A brief editorial from us on the matter: It goes without saying, this is a complete mess. Let’s count the ways Southwest did wrong here. First off, and probably the biggest one, is the fact that they took Kevin’s pass and allowed him to board the flight. Even if Kevin made a flight change, the airline didn’t have to board him if they didn’t want him on the plane. In looking at Kevin’s earlier tweets, his initial anger stemmed from the fact that they took his ticket, got him seated, settled and buckled in, luggage stowed, THEN wanted him to leave the plane? Ridiculous. The proper way to handle that, if they truly felt he was a “safety risk”, was to not take his ticket and get him on a different flight. Still an inconvenience, but a LOT less inconvenient than what happened last night.

Let’s talk about the whole twitter situation as well. Companies around the world have embraced the use of Twitter as a way to track customer satisfaction. That’s good. However, Southwest has really hurt themselves by trying to handle this situation in such a public way. If they MUST say something, a simple tweet would suffice. Their continued reassurances of trying to handle the situation just makes it look worse. Why? Let’s say you or I had the same thing happen and tweeted it. Would the SWA twitter account bat an eyelash towards us in public? Not a chance. Would they contact us in private to try and resolve? Maybe. But that’s the way to do it. It doesn’t matter if your client is Kevin Smith, Joe Schmoe, or Bill Gates — Don’t go out of your way to try and impress us with all this public concern because the customers’s got a platform of 1.6 million to talk to. I’d like to think that if I had a gripe with Southwest, they’d do something to help me out as well. You just get the feeling they’re doing this for him, but for John Q. Public, there wouldn’t be nearly as much attention given. As of presstime, they’ve even issued a blog about the incident which completely ignores the most essential aspects of the story — Kevin flew on their planes, both ways, in a single seat of the aircraft, without incident. They also neglected to mention the most imporant part – They BOARDED him, SEATED him, filled up the plane, THEN asked him to get up and leave? Come on.

So in short, and this goes to all of those companies monitoring a twitter feed – It’s great if you want to use twitter to monitor customer concerns, but take your actions to resolve them private. We’re sure that customers who get stuff straightened out would be just as happy to tweet their positive experiences back as well. Let the customer do it — Don’t try and make an example of how far you to help people, unless you do it for EVERYONE, not just those of us with millions of fans on twitter.

Tonight, Kevin takes to the air with a SPECIAL EDITION of SModcast he’s calling SWodcast. In this episode, he’ll detail the entire experience in his own words. We can’t wait to hear the full details. Kevin’s not out for any sort of restitution, or any sort of legal matters, he just wants everyone to hear what’s going down. For others who have had similar treatment, here’s your justice. As for Southwest, they’ve got a lot of apologizing to do to make up for this one — And they’d better be on top of other tweets regarding customer service issues, and give just as much attention as they’ve attempted to give this situation, or you bet we’ll hear about that, too.

For another summary, hit up the New York Daily News who ran a story about it all.

Check back with News Askew later today, as we continue to cover this developing story.