Southwest Airlines has not only taken a stance against open-seating and your bags flying free, but now they are coming after your humanoid robots.
Ok, maybe not your humanoid robot, because where do you even buy one of those? Is Circuit City still around?
But after a recent flight from Las Vegas to Dallas, a passenger boarded the plane with one of these little robot guys, even equipping him with a smaller lithium-ion battery to meet airline and TSA rules, AND even purchasing it its own ticket!
But a couple of days after the flight, Southwest announced that any and all of these human-like robots will be banned from their planes going forward, stating that this new policy “ensures compliance with lithium-ion battery safety guidelines.”
We just got robots banned from Southwest Airlines. You’re welcome 🫡
Yesterday we flew our humanoid robot Stewie from Las Vegas to Dallas on Southwest — something we (and others) have tried and failed multiple times because batteries are always the issue.
This time we cracked… pic.twitter.com/FqJjk1vSfQ
— Aaron Mehdizadeh (@rentbotsTX) May 12, 2026
According to NBC DFW, another Southwest flight was delayed nearly an hour when another humanoid robot had its larger lithium battery flagged as oversized.
Aaron Mehdizadeh, owner of The Robot Studio in North Dallas, who was accompanied by “Stewie” on the recent flight from Las Vegas to Dallas, hopes Southwest will reconsider so robots that satisfy safety rules can fly again.
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