Woman called 'smelly fatty' on flight can't stop crying until another passenger gets involved

A woman wrote on social media about her experience after being called "a smelly fatty" during a flight from Oklahoma to Illinois.

Savannah Phillips, from Oklahoma, US, always prefers to sit by herself during flights because she feels self-conscious about her weight but when she boarded a plane to Chicago on May 14, she didn’t have the option.

Her flight to Chicago had been rescheduled due to bad weather and because of that, her seat was assigned at the gate. When she got on the plane, she realized that she was given a window seat.

Savannah was seated next to a man described to be in his 60s with yellow sunglasses who claimed to be a comedian. The man stood up to let her get to her seat and then sat down, took his cell phone, and started texting.

Her Facebook post stated, "As soon as I got buckled, he sat back down...his phone was maybe 12 inches from my face and he proceeded to text someone that he was sitting next to a "smelly fatty"

"I could feel hot, salty tears coming down my face," she said. The whole incident, however, took an unexpected turn when another passenger intervened to help her. It was a bar manager, Chase Irwin.*

After about 10 minutes of crying silently at her seat, Savannah said she was surprised to see someone behind her tap on the man's shoulder, saying: "Hey, I need to talk to you."

The kind stranger told the so-called comedian that he would not put up with the text message he was sending and ordered the man to switch seats with him.

He rightfully called the older gentleman heartless. They made the switch and the nice man, whose name Savannah later learned was Chase Irwin, explained that what he’d seen the bully saying made him totally irate.

Savannah and Irwin got along great, chatting about their families and jobs on the flight to Chicago. The flight attendant, who learned about what happened, kept trying to give Irwin free drinks and said that he was her hero.

"He asked if I saw the texts and I nodded yes. He encouraged me not to let that guy get to me and that everything was going to be fine," she wrote. Read more on our Twitter account @amomama_usa