After David Dao was dragged off a United Express flight and bloodied in April, United CEO Oscar Munoz apologized that passengers ‘had to be re-accommodated’ and he sent a letter to employees blaming Dao for the incident.
That may have been the worst apology in airline history. And the response helped fuel outrage over the incident.
United CEO Oscar Munoz
This morning I wrote about a Southwest Airlines passenger dragged off a Baltimore – Los Angeles flight.
She had objected to an emotional support animal on the plane, citing her allergies. The airline decided to remove her, not wanting her to become ill inflight. She wouldn’t leave, Southwest called law enforcement, and the situation escalated.
Leave aside that airlines generally won’t require documentation for an emotional support animal but chose to remove this woman because she lacked documentation of her allergies. They should at a minimum have worked to re-accommodate her whether seated as far away from the animal as possible or in a way that better resolved the customer service situation than calling the police.
Southwest airlines is apologizing to the passenger and it may be the second worst apology I’ve ever seen.
Southwest says, “Our Flight Crew made repeated attempts to explain the situation to the Customer, however, she refused to deplane and law enforcement became involved.”
Law enforcement became involved. Southwest Airlines called law enforcement on their customer, something United pledges no longer to do after the David Dao dragging incident. Southwest resorts to use of the passive voice. Mistakes were made… refusing to own the situation.
They continue,
“We are disheartened by the way this situation unfolded and the Customer’s removal by local law enforcement officers,” Southwest Airlines said in the statement. “We publicly offer our apologies to this Customer for her experience and we will be contacting her directly to address her concerns. Southwest Airlines was built on Customer Service, and it is always our goal for all Customers to have a positive experience.”
They aren’t taking responsibility, the situation simply ‘unfolded’ in a way they’re disheartened by as detached observers. And they apology for that not because their employees decided to outsource customer service issues to law enforcement.
In this case the woman pulled off the plane by police wasn’t hurt the way David Dao was. Nonetheless the incident — and the response — seem so out of character for Southwest, and I’m disappointed in them for it.
Honestly I thought all airlines had been watched and learned the post-David Dao trick for removing passengers from a plane without violence.
I’m not sure this one is the fault of Southwest. If I was on a flight and was allergic to dogs who were rightfully on-board, I think I’d just ask to be moved to another flight. Why did she fight it?
I must agree. Southwest has a great reputation overall, but you can’t rest on your laurels. A reputation is earned every day, and this is one day when Southwest comes out looking very bad in many ways.
I agree with Rick–she created the problem. She referred to her allergy as life-threatening, and demanded that the dogs be removed from the plane, which of course she has no right to do. If her allergies are so sensitive that she absolutely cannot be on a plane with dogs, then she should be adjusting her travel accordingly–not demanding that everyone else accommodate her.
Gary Leff is surely half-asleep when he suggests the airline merely move her to a different seat. The customer has declared a life-threatening allergy to the airline staff, so of course this compels them to not let her fly with the dogs—if they had let her fly and there was a medical issue at 32,000 feet above the earth, undoubtedly people would blame the airline for letting her fly to begin with. She has put the airline in an untenable liability position.
Gary lies when he says they “chose to remove her because she had no documentation of her allergies.” They removed her because she was a giant liability risk once she identified a life-threatening allergy, with the identified allergen with her on a plane.
In usual fashion, Gary also conveniently leaves out that the woman has been charged with five crimes: disorderly conduct, failure to obey a reasonable and lawful order, disturbing the peace, obstructing and hindering a police officer, and resisting arrest.
I am wondering two things.
(1) How close was the woman to the animals in question? I am doubtful that dog dander would travel from say the front of the plane to the back of the plane. But if the dog was in the next seat, and was running free, then it might be problematic.
(2) What kind of allergy documentation would she need? Would a letter do from an Allergist do? I love dogs and cats. Unfortunately, I break out in rashes with close contact, despite taking allergy shots for them. I might just obtain a letter, and ask to be re seated if I am sitting next to MarmaDuke the Great Dane on a long flight (over two hours). Don’t laugh, I have seen really large service dogs on planes. I have pictures to prove it. In fact, during my last trip through ORD, I thought I was walking through a kennel there were so many emotional support dogs. Maybe it was a bad day.
(3) Haven’t seen any emotional support pigs, horses, chickens, mice, rats, or rabbits yet. But I am sure I will.
Regardless of whether or not it was a good idea for Southwest to take the action they did. I will never understand people who refuse to leave an area where both the agents of the business and law enforcement are instructing them to leave. Whether you are right or wrong, you have lost the battle, refusing to leave is just going to make you look stupid, possibly result in injury and will not help you get whatever it is you are trying to get.
Becoming increasingly belligerent won’t help your case.
Get off the plane.
Hmm.. I admit I have only ready two articles on this but neither of them used the term, “life threatening” when describing her condition. If she has a “life-threatening” allergy to dogs, then I suppose she would 1-Carry documentation to substantiate this “life-threatening” medical condition and 2-Probably face this “life-threatening” situation in general public contact on a weekly basis.
On the other hand, why didn’t she just get off her “life-threatening” allergy-stuffed backside and walk off the plane when asked? But how does an airline justify the action it took? I mean seriously, the use of force?
So you ask, “what else can the airline do if she refuses?” They can cancel the flight. Everyone gets off the plane and then they re-instate the flight and board everyone but her.
Every single domestic flight has these “emotional support dogs. To say that the person should be moved to another flight is not the solution nor is it legal. The airlines are not allowed to discriminate between disabilities. The airline is under an obligation to make sure everyone’s disability is accommodated. @Joey, the pax had a right to be on the plane as she paid for her ticket and her disability should be respected. You might not have a disability today but you may sometime down the line. Hopefully someone won’t tell you to “get off the plane.”
I’m wondering why certain people feel the need to come on to Gary’s blog and bash him on a regular (and mean -spirited) basis? If you vehemently (and often) disagree, don’t read it. I appreciate thoughtful on-point comments, but the Gary-bashing is unproductive.
As to Southwest, they were in a lose-lose situation thanks to the current interpretations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and other remedial civil rights legislation which have given people carte blanche to abuse laws meant to protect the truly disabled. We see this in California where every self-important wannabe who “has issues” thinks that he/she has the right to bring their “emotional support” animals into every restaurant, coffee house, retail shop, department store, etc. And with the state of the law (including the Unruh Act in CA which mandates minimum civil penalties of $4,000), even asking the wrong question of someone with one of these folks brining along a pet (because that is what it usually is), businesses are scared to be even slightly aggressive with the pet owners.
Legitimately disabled people should absolutely be permitted to have a service animal that is medically necessary for daily activities. But the abuse needs to stop, and there needs to be some sort of uniform licensing of service animals so that an airline – or any business – can simply look at a standard document and determine whether or not the animal should be accommodated.
The aircraft is the property of the airline and when you are asked to leave by the property owner, and then law enforcement, you leave. Period. Just like someone who asks you to leave their home. Argue later.
This woman is just a pain in the ass to travelers across the country. Unfortunate it happened, though.
As someone who has allergies, I’m 100% with her. If you need your “emotional support animal” (way different than a trained service dog) with you, you probably just shouldn’t fly. Why should these people be able to fly with their pets just because they bought a $20 vest online and those of us with allergies have to suffer? I cite this as yet another reason to stop this nonsense: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/passenger-attacked-by-emotional-support-dog-on-delta-flight
awful. southwest! bad! very bad!
Right on, Andrew
Gary rightfully pointed out the problems with the non-apology. A more forthright statement would have gone a long way.
That said, we have two problems here. One is a passenger with an allergy that apparently didn’t get out ahead of the potential issue and the other is the larger issue of the proliferation of “service animals”.
As much as I appreciate the important work real service animals do, a growing number of people threaten the health and well-being of those people who genuinely need their service animals by using a bogus “service animal” status to get their otherwise ineligible pets onto planes, into restaurants, etc.
My only question and this comes with someone who has a peanut allergy. While not officially required why did she not inform the airline before arriving at the airport?
How about the element in the room – the explosion of bogus emotional support animals. It has to be addressed or it’s only going to get worse.
The correct response by Southwest would have been a statement that the airline had only two options here: cancel the flight and tell everyone to leave or ask law enforcement to remove the one person who claimed her life would be in danger if she flew. The statement should have said that this was a difficult decision to make with no lawyers on speed dial, so the company supports the employee’s on-the-spot decision.
In the future airlines will cancel the flight, inconveniencing everyone because of one person’s poor decision. Actually two people so far. This lady and the United guy (who was in the right until he resisted removal) will have created customer-unfriendly policy just as the shoe bomber did.
When will SWA, AA, DL, UA, etc, understand that customers do not want to witness or be part of the D0 mandate that requires cabin crew to call Law Enforcement officers to forcibly remove other customers with whom they are in an active dispute and are delaying the plane, etc.? Just empty the plane, detain and re-accommodate the customer if necessary. Reboard everyone else that wants to, or let them go on another flight to. Maybe they have allergies and didn’t want to speak up. Avoid “Lose-Lose” except in life critical situations. Don’t make a mountain from a mole hill. Any crew that wants to call law for non-life critical situation needs to first call HQ, and request a 15 minute plane delay while they discuss the situation with the people at SWA that have to write the apology news release. Cancel the flight if you have to, but don’t turn it into a news story for XXX million people.
Just writing this, I understand why this short circuits SWA… because they do not assign seats. All of the customers that fought and planned so diligently for good seats will not easily give them up, unless they have crappy seats not worth keeping. I would tell my family to deplane instead of watching a uniformed law or security officer possibly get into a violent altercation with a customer because the crew needs a D0 credit.
Interesting… might be time for SWA with all of their 737’s to assign seats. Is it that difficult? It probably is for SWA since, only this year, they migrated from their, cough-cough, Braniff reservations system. That’s right, cough-cough, Braniff, cough, reservation system. I guess 737’s existed back then.
Gary Leff is 100% right here, this is the 2nd worst apology in airline history.
Airlines calling law enforcement for anything other than serious physical violence is unacceptable and must be called out, thank you Gary Leff.
I’ll take a moment to call out the pig of a police officer who brutally dragged this woman off the flight, even if no injuries were sustained his aggressive verbal attitude served no purpose but to raise everybody’s adrenaline levels.
I wish some passenger would’ve swiped the gun off another officer’s holster and shot the offending officer straight to death. Police brutality is a real problem in this country and we’re not going to solve it unless dickbag aggressive officers face serious consequences.
They could never allow someone with “life-threatening allergies” on a flight with an emotional support animal. I’m all for piling on the airlines for their shabby treatment of their customers, but the current rules don’t allow them to question passengers with support animals. It stinks, but those are the rules, and the airlines’ hands are tied. Blaming Southwest in this instance is disingenuous.
I don’t know that it matters one bit if one of the dogs was an emotional support/service animal. Pets ARE allowed to fly in the cabin on Southwest when you pay Southwest’s fee, even if they aren’t service animals. If this lady’s allergy to animals could truly be deadly, she should have called ahead to alert Southwest or at the very least informed the gate agent. Waiting until she was seated and on board the plane was not the time to alert them to a life-threatening allergy. Southwest had no choice but to get her off the flight with that knowledge she could have a medical emergency during the flight. I don’t think they owed her an apology at all.
The authoritarian goose stepping I’m reading here is as pronounced as the Nazi March in Charlottesville that Cheetolini endorsed.
But the comments really jump the shark when Jack Boot insists that proof of the woman’s criminality is that she was charged with five crimes!
The Trumpanzees are on the loose!
The time has come to ban all animals from the passenger cabin. Even blind people don’t need a dog to navigate the aisle and can have the animal delivered from the hold with the strollers.
I am disappointed with both WN and the police but then again Baltimore police are the ones who gave Freddie Gray a joyride.
On the plus side Gary can’t single out United anymore for dragging paid passengers from its aircraft. Who will be next? My bet is on Spirit.
I am a diabetic and go into a coma if my blood sugar goes too low. I have a chihuahua service dog that alerts me so I can eat or drink something quickly to get my blood sugar raised. If she is forced to be under a seat she is not close enough to judge my odor. She weighs 5 lbs and sits in my lap. She does not make noises nor is she aggressive. I would not be able to do many things if I could not take my dog with me.
BTW good is not the only way to cause blood sugar to act up. Most times with me is pain, stress and exhaustion.
Food is what I meant to say.
I don’t understand your culture. Seems that animal is worth more than human. If so, why airline only equipped with seats, not cages?
So much victim-bashing here. Is it truly this passenger’s fault that she has allergies? Christ, people…
I should concur. Southwest has an awesome notoriety by and large, yet you can’t lay on your shrubs.
The comments are interesting, but why has no one commented on the fact that the SWA Flight Attendant repeatedly asked passengers to put away their phones? I didn’t realize that the US had become a dictatorship, keen on censoring at every possible moment? SWA was way out of line and I applaud the people that continued filming.
The guy who filmed the incident was interviewed by local TV news when the plane completed its flight, and he thought the woman was at fault.
Everybody here is screaming about fake ESA people and I get that. However I am pretty sure nobody has brought this up so let me ask…what if the woman with the dog simply paid the $95 fee and brought the dog on the plane per SW policy. Same incident ensues…how is this resolved?
This makes me wonder: does Southwest require documentation of peanut allergies from passengers before they stop serving peanuts on flights?
Time for a law suit. I hope she kicks SouthWest Airlines in the teeth when they get to court.
The woman is 100% at fault. Southwest is known to be lenient with emotional support dogs. The dogs have every right to be on that flight as she does. If she’s deathly allergic, the dog stays, she goes. Simple
Gary, I think Southwest is right, here. What was in the local papers was that the allergy lady had an injection she wished to take to ensure her safety on the flight. However, this is what she had no medical documentation for, and without this the crew could not help her with this injection. The pilot offered to allow her to temporarily disembark to self-administer the shot or seek assistance in the airport, but she refused. I’m not entirely sure what you think southwest was supposed to do. Legally, they cannot kick off an emotional support animal. Nor can they fly when a passenger has declared a severe allergy to this animal. When this passenger refused attempts at accommodation and refused to get off the plane, what options are left? I don’t think Southwest owes anyone an apology.
Agree with DB. Quit focusing on the ESA. What if you were traveling with your precious “insert your favorite teacup-sized, designer dog-breed here”, and bought this animal a ticket? Should you be asked to leave the plane because someone claims to have a life-threatening allergy even though she could not produce documentation of the allergy?
Three thoughts:
1) I agree 100% with Jon. The most offensive thing to me about this whole incident is the flight attendant demanding that people put away their phones. If they are doing something that they feel the need to hide then they probably shouldn’t be doing it.
2) The lady put Southwest in a no-win situation and it seems that they were pretty reasonable in trying to accommodate her.
3) I know people love their animals. I know they are like members of the family. And I don’t doubt that their are legitimate reasons for having a service animal. But I don’t want to be near someone else’s animal. I don’t want to smell it. I don’t want to have animal hair on my clothes. I don’t want to sit in a seat after someone else’s animal has been there. If Southwest is going to allow pets, the person forced to sit next to it should get the $95—though it would take much more than $95 for me to voluntarily do that.
If you ask for removal of two other passengers who are minding their own business, you are not the victim: You are the perpetrator.
I hope you remove @Jason’s comment calling for the felonious murder of a law enforcement officer conducting his official duties.
I’ve commented on this before, and I’ll say it again. Southwest trying to remove this woman from the plane is a prima facie violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. An allergy that limits one of the basic life functions (e.g., breathing) is a disability under the Act. By choosing to tell the woman with a disability that she must take another, later flight, the airline discriminated against her.
What the airline should have done is brought its Complaint Resolution Officer to the gate to resolve the situation — not the police. The parties should have been reseated apart from each other, with the people with animals in one end of the plane and the woman with the allergies in the other. Since airflow goes from the nose to the tail, those with animals should have been moved to the rear of the plane, and the woman with allergies to the front.
Those who are trying to pin blame on the woman complaining are simply wrong. If she was telling the truth to the crew, she had valid ADA rights that were trampled by Southwest.
By the way, my wife has asthma triggered by pet dander, and has been advised by her allergist not to be in close proximity to pets during a flight. We carry a letter from her physician when we fly, although we do not have to do so. And, on the one occasion we were seated close to a person with an animal, we did ask that the CRO come to the plane. Fortunately, the lead FA was able to broker an accommodation in advance of the CRO’s arrival.
Tim L says:
September 28, 2017 at 8:54 am
1) I agree 100% with Jon. The most offensive thing to me about this whole incident is the flight attendant demanding that people put away their phones.
and the first thing Southwest is going to do is want full reports from all involved, including the flight attendants. Werent they not enforcing company policy? Prohibited filming? Simply put, they were doing their job. Making the PA was a smart thing to do even though the likelihood of compliance was slim. Offensive? NO.
In order to have an emotional support animal on a plane, one must have a form filled out and attested to by a licensed psychiatrist or psychologist. A regular physician is not acceptable, nor are other medical personnel’s statements.
@Chad – Are you a Southwest Flight Attendant … c’mon be honest !
Dogs do not have a right to be on a flight.
@Daniel
“The dogs have every right to be on that flight as she does”
National Geographic talked to Grimm about whether pets are property or (legally) people, and about what their evolving status means for the animals and for the humans who love them.
I have a dog and a cat. What legal rights do they have?
The last couple of decades, there have been a lot of laws that target cats and dogs specifically and give them what a lot of lawyers would consider rights, whether it’s the right to be free of cruelty, the right to be rescued from a natural disaster, or the right to have their interests be considered in a courtroom.
It’s still the case that cats and dogs are considered property. Technically, in the eyes of the law, they are no different from a couch or a car.
Other Just Saying
You missed USAirways flying pig…..no joke…it deficated in the forward boarding area..
The passenger actually went as far as to demand an allergy shot, which they did not have on board. If she has such a life threatening allergy, then I would think she wouldn’t leave home without it. I know as Southwest if I was in that situation, I would also not want an emergency like that half way through a flight
This is the best statement a 7 figure CEO with as many PR people and lawyers as he needs at his disposal and 24 hours of time can make? Shame on him. Having said that, once someone declares they are in the middle of a life threatening allergy and need help administering medication (if that is what in fact happened) is it reasonable to refuse to get off the airplane when police gently but firmly insist on it? Having seen 70,000 patients in ERs and other places (including anaphylaxis on an Alaska train), severe allergies is one of the few things that still scares me because they can die so quickly . Once someone is on your turf, then declares a life threatening problem, then refuses to do what you feel you need to do to keep them safe, you have no alternative but to call police- and once you do you have no right to intervene in their professional actions. We do it all the time unfortunately at hospitals. Way too many people out there who refuse to do what 99% of reasonable people would do in a similar situation and put others at risk. This is nothing like the doctor who paid for his ticket, was medically well and represented no threat to airline safety and simply wanted to get back to his job because the airline wouldn’t offer other people a reasonable compensation for their inconvenience. We don’t know all the facts yet but I’m not sure that Southwest will ultimately look like the bad guy once everyone is allowed to tell their entire story.
The only way to fight BS ESA’s is with more ESA’s. if we all get one , we’ll eventually force society to fix the problem. Also, make sure to feed your dog lots of peanuts before the flight and maybe you’ll get two birds with one stone. What if my wife put a leash on me, could I be her ESA and fly for free? Although laying on the floor of a plane doesn’t sound great.
Ive never heard of anyone with life threatening dog allergies. If someone truly had them then I don’t know how they could ever leave their house. Without more info she sounds bored and attention seeking. I bet if she had an ESA of her own this would have never happened!
No wonder the other passengers wanted the dogs to stay and the woman to get off- the dogs were obviously much better behaved!
She just wanted her 15 mins of fame and a payday – soooo tired of these people who probably practice their moves in front of a camera beforehand.
And @Jason – the comment about wishing someone had shot the police officer to death was so far off the reservation, it was barely human.