Jaelynn Chaney, a self-described “fat rights” influencer best known for demanding free extra seats for plus-size travelers, has been arrested following a disturbing series of incidents that began earlier this year in Washington State. There’s an aviation angle here, but this matter transcends travel.
Plus-Size Activist Jaelynn Chaney Arrested After Hospital Disturbance, Charged With Assault
According to court records cited by the UK Daily Mail, Chaney, 29, was arrested after police were called to Trios Medical Hospital in Kennewick, Washington, for a disturbance. Officers said Chaney, who was not a patient, became combative after being asked to leave, tearing up a trespass warning and threatening officers. The arresting officer described her as “very unpleasant to deal with,” claiming she threatened to kill their families and shouted obscenities while being escorted out in a wheelchair due to her size.
When officers attempted to arrest her, Chaney allegedly struck one in the shoulder and arm, tried to hit him in the face, then threw herself to the ground screaming that she was being killed and sexually assaulted. She was charged with third-degree assault and resisting arrest. Police later said they had to summon an evidence van to transport her because she could not fit into a patrol car.
Court filings show that Chaney had called 911 41 times in the months leading up to the incident. Her father told reporters that the confrontation began after she caught her fiancé, fellow influencer Jacob Ard, with another man. Soon after her arrest, she was found incompetent to stand trial and transferred to Eastern State Hospital for inpatient treatment, where doctors later diagnosed delirium due to sepsis, a personality disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The case was eventually dismissed after prosecutors received the hospital’s evaluation report.
From Airline Advocacy To Public Meltdown
Chaney first gained prominence for her online campaigns demanding that airlines provide free additional seats for obese passengers and overhaul boarding procedures for travelers of size. Her proposals, including spreading out without charge and raising base ticket prices for others to offset the cost, drew both praise and ridicule. She championed Southwest’s “passenger of size” policy, accused a Seattle–Tacoma Airport worker of discrimination for refusing to push her in a wheelchair, and regularly framed herself as a symbol of body-positive empowerment.
Behind that public persona, however, was a pattern of instability and conflict. Chaney’s own posts hinted at relationship abuse, homelessness, and trauma. Days before her arrest, she launched a GoFundMe campaign seeking funds for “short-term housing, living essentials, and legal guidance,” describing near-death from sepsis and ongoing isolation.
There’s a hard truth behind this story. Social media built Chaney into a cause and rewarded her for turning health crisis into activism. But celebrating obesity as empowerment carries consequences that neither influencers nor their audiences can outrun.
It isn’t cruel to say that the human body has limits. When online movements frame medical illness as identity and defiance as progress, they risk turning suffering into spectacle. Chaney’s meltdown is not just a personal tragedy; it is a reflection of a culture that confuses compassion with indulgence and validation with virtue.
Her push for more accommodation on airplanes as she celebrated being fat? Also serious delusion…
CONCLUSION
Jaelynn Chaney’s downfall marks a painful but instructive chapter in the intersection of health, social media, and activism. Her message that airlines and society must accommodate extreme size resonated with many, but her story now illustrates how denial of reality eventually collapses under its own weight.
Empathy does not require illusion. Dignity does not mean pretending that all choices are equal. The body keeps the score, and so does life. I wish all the best to Chaney, but acceptance of a problem is the first step in solving it.
Prior coverage:
- Passenger Of Size Demands Larger Seats On Taxpayer’s Dime
- Plus-Size Travel Influencer Says Airport Worker Refused To Push Her Wheelchair, Leaving Her Gasping For Breath
- Southwest Airlines Glamorizes Obesity…
- On Empathy And Compassion, Concerning Passengers Of Size
image: Jaelynn Chaney / GoFundMe
Definitely mental illness at work here. The jokes write themselves with this story but even I actually feel bad repeating them.
Hopefully she gets the help she needs both mentally and nutritionally and she lives a long healthy life away from the public eye.
By the way, how about a story on the Harrisburg (MDT) PA hacking this week. Huge story that was underreported IMO.
Re: “Definitely mental illness at work here.” Takes one to know one, ANOTHER completely accurate self-own from Douchebag David Edwards. I’ll give you a little hint Douchebag, no charge. No intelligent or rational human being gives a flying f—k about your opinions. Maybe other cultists and conspiracy theorists and deranged people do, but certainly no normal healthy people do. You really should try to find something else to do with your obviously empty and pathetic life than to comment here again over and over again every single day.
Douchebag Dave Edwards & Sch*tt Hsuan, proving with your every (too frequent) comment that your nicknames are absolutely accurate and completely deserved and that you each have nothing better to do with your pathetic waste-of-oxygen lives than to post abhorrent and revolting comments here over and over again every single day. Thank you for confirming once again that you and other MAGAs are stupid hateful racist cretins. Trolling or not, the extent and frequency of your comments are indicative of severe psychiatric and/or addiction problems. Your insults, undoubtedly projection, speak much more to your lack of character than to anyone you attack. Hope you each get deported back to whatever rocks you crawled out from you SHPOSs.
Bro you are clearly the UNHINGED ONE
Wow. There must be a fascinating backstory here.
Lol you need to seek mental help or don’t, I don’t care.
TDS is a mental disorder.
Get help bro. Not healthy.
Note I left a comment 15 minutes ago and still not showing.
This happens on every post and why I figured you had me on an approval process for them.
Your prior comment showed up immediately on my end – I don’t know if it is a cache issue on your computer?
Can you block this person and their IP?
Not Douchebag Dave Edwards nor Sch*tt Hsuan, Obviously He/She/They/It Is or Are REPLY
Please please pleaaaaaaase say there is body cam footage of the incident?
Maybe no one had a wide angle lens enough to capture the event!
I would like to see it as well!
Moooooooooooooo
Malaka!
Airlines can accommodate many different passenger maladies with no issues and with little or no lost revenue. However, a person who occupies more than the allocated space, must pay the price since this is LOST REVENUE! ! It’s no different for baggage, asking for two meals at a restaurant because you need the calories to sustain your excessive girth, trying to fit in a standard size Uber/Lyft…etc. Why should the airline be forced to lose revenue due to a minuscule percentage of the population?
Such a sad story and I hope she gets the help she needs. I also hope airlines stop rolling over for these influencers desperate for attention that are trolling their companies.
41 911 calls…
Difficult time for her, but disagreed very much with her values and demands.
And hope the airlines and regulators saw through the delusion. Seems as a society the emphasis on extreme identity pandering peaked around 2022 or so and thankfully has been ebbing to more rational discourse.
She’s a very unhealthy person, both physically and psychologically.
Where is the “airline angle”?
Between her butt & thighs?
Or yours?
A lot of times with women of size their significant other is usually interested in same sex. The large women are just coverups as they know not much can go on intimately.
Let’s be reasonable; if you need two seats on an airplane then you should pay for two seats.
Clearly she has issues, mental and physical, but this tale is also instructive in how the Social Media Industry chews people up and spits them out in the name of entertainment and profit
Extra seats subject to space availability.
Urgh, can she just stroke out already.
Police later said they had to summon an evidence van to transport her because she could not fit into a patrol car. Hahaha.
Please have a the courtesy to have a stroke at the local landfill. The cost to the taxpayers of hauling her off is expensive.
Sandy, if you think I should be blocked you either haven’t visited this blog often enough (to know what nasty racist bigoted morons they are) or you’re a MAGAturd.
Re: “TDS is a mental disorder.” absolutely, TDS affects every MAGAturd to some degree, no other way to explain voting for and supporting a compulsive serial pathologic liar, flip-flopping, pathologic toxic narcissist, know-it-all, probably schizophrenic or psychopathic, arrogant, sanctimonious, psychological projecting, multiply convicted felon, serial sexual abuser, completely corrupt, grifter, unintelligent, immature, infantile, stupid, ignorant, cheating (on all 3 wives), military service dodging, racist, conspiracy theory embracing, authoritarian, fascist, nasty, bully, incompetent, arrogant, with 50 years multiply documented proofs for each of those allegations, devoid of morals and integrity and honesty or a single redeeming quality. Every one of his policies, according to all objective criteria, are detrimental to the best interests of the country. He and his policies are fundamentally indefensible.