Tag Archives for pets.
A viral check-in video from a Sheraton in suburban Atlanta shows a manager refusing to honor a guest’s reservation because she arrived with a dog she says is a service animal. When police arrive, the hotel keeps repeating “no pets,” and the officer has to explain the basic point: service animals aren’t pets under disability law, and a blanket no-pets policy doesn’t end the conversation.
A JetBlue passenger at Las Vegas Airport abandoned her dog by tying him to a baggage sizer after being told she lacked service-animal paperwork, then calmly proceeded to her gate, assuring police the dog “had a tracker” and would “find his way home.”
A Frontier Airlines flight attendant turned boarding into a cabin lockdown, announcing that someone had smuggled a dog onboard and telling passengers to “snitch on your neighbor” until the hidden pet was found. Instead of quietly fixing a policy problem, the airline effectively deputized a full plane of customers to police each other.
An 81-year-old grandmother from the Bronx flew to Puerto Rico on Frontier Airlines with her emotional support animal. It’s an African Grey parrot (not a Norwegian Blue) and its name is Plucky. However, the airline refused to allow her to fly home with it.
Here’s a dog standing up on the furniture at the American Airlines Admirals Club in Los Angeles. Since customer provisions there lag what United and Delta offer at their clubs, this dog is presumably eating and drinking there just as well as the passengers.
We sat and waited for operations to find us a new gate to return to. Once we were back and the aircraft doors were opened, a Delta red coat supervisor came on board. It was explained she’d need to come off the aircraft to discuss the situation. She gathered her belongings and got off the plane.
Plot twist: a few minutes later, the woman and her dog returned to the aircraft. She was being allowed to fly, after all.
What appears to be an emotional support poodle flew American AIrlines out of Dallas in its own first class seat on Sunday.. The dog named “happy” in Chinese was reported “well behaved” but still shouldn’t have been there.
A Delta Air Lines passenger in Detroit allowed their dog to dine at the lounge buffet, openly defying Delta’s strict no-pet policies as staff appeared to ignore the rule violations, coming off a dog eating in the new Delta One JFK restaurant and another flying up front against airline rules.
There are plenty of people who think modern air travel is inhumane. Today’s coach cabin isn’t fit for people. One man says Alaska Airlines economy is worse than that: it killed his dog.
The FAA worked with airlines on new regulations that helped them crack down on the Noah’s Ark approach to domestic pet travel. Ostensibly passengers are now limited to real service animals. In practice, though, you just have to fill out paperwork in advance and say you have a service animal.
So here are some standards you can use to tell if the animal a passenger is bringing on board is a real service animal – or if the passenger is just circumventing the rules.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
