US ends era of emotional support animals on planes
US airlines will no longer be required to transport emotional support animals after passengers insisted on bringing on board their horses, pigs, peacocks and turkeys for psychological reasons.
Wednesday's rule change by the US Department of Transportation now says only dogs qualify as service animals.
The agency said unusual animals on flights had "eroded the public trust in legitimate service animals".
Airlines say the old policy had been abused and was dangerous.
The new rule defines service dogs as "individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability", and says other animals should be treated by airlines as pets that can be placed in the cargo hold for a fee.
Previously: The Confusion About Pets (archive)
"Emotional Support Animals" Riding With Owners Aboard Commercial Airlines Flights
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The young, perfectly healthy looking guy ahead of me in Panera Bread walked his fifty lb. dog to the front of the line - I can't tell you the breed since I don't know dogs - and was immediately told that the dog had to go. "Um, I have an anxiety disorder", he replied. The cashier turned around to consult with the manager, but people were still waiting to order, and soon it was conceded that the customer and his service dog/best friend could stay for lunch. And they did.
The Chicago Tribune reports that similar incidents are cropping up on airlines. Passengers dread having their pets locked up in a kennel in the cargo section, and airlines charge hefty fees for the service, so some of them are taking advantage of a legal loophole allowing service dogs of disabled people to ride in the passenger cabin free of charge; but in these cases the disability is "emotional distress" rather than, say, blindness. Many of these passengers pay a licensed therapist for the certificate of need required by airline gate attendants, and for an expensive vest for their "service animals".
From the Tribune story:
"It's definitely gotten carried away to the point where people are taking advantage of the system," [Atlanta flight attendant] Williams said. "It's hard when someone is following protocol and they're not allowed to take the animal out of the cage, but others use the loophole to have an animal sit on their lap."
The story mentions that some fellow passengers and advocates for the (real) disabled are annoyed with the game-playing and lax enforcement. However, others perhaps side with the late Harry Nilsson, who famously sang "I'd take my puppy everywhere, la-la-la I wouldn't care. We'll stay away from crowds, signs that said 'No friends allowed'".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @06:13AM (5 children)
I'd even go so far as to post a sign that says, "If you can read this, your dog is not a service animal".
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @12:33PM (1 child)
Abuse of "service animals" is common (abuse of the definition, not the animals!... Hopefully), but there are other things that service animals do besides just guiding the blind. The definition is that it must be specially trained to perform a specific and necessary task. One common task is detection of allergens, oncoming seizures, or diabetic attacks. They can also be trained to help people with physical disabilities by, for example, retrieving objects that would be difficult for the person to handle without assistance.
Horses can also be valid service animals, they're as trainable as dogs and live longer, but of course most are inconveniently large. Still, it happens. The DOT does not administer the ADA, and it sounds like they're setting up a regulatory conflict.
Emotional support peacocks are bullshit, of course.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @09:09PM
Emotional support animals are NOT service animals. They are covered by completely different law. Service animals are under the ADA. ESAs on planes are covered by the ACAA, which was passed after a senator's wife was forced to put her dog in cargo. After having the fear of God (and budget cuts) put into them, they loosened up the documentation rules quite a bit. Legally they have to still allow service animals on planes, regardless of species, so there will probably be a lawsuit. But by actually requiring the documentation the law says they can require would still cut drastically down on abuses.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DannyB on Friday December 04 2020, @04:45PM (1 child)
Some diabetics or epileptics have a service animal even though they can read the sign.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 05 2020, @10:07AM
Not quite sure why training a dog to read would imply it can't be a service animal. But ok.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday December 05 2020, @06:23PM
"If your dog can read this, we're short on pilots"
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @06:24AM (5 children)
Does this mean I cannot take takyon along as my support, um, animal, anymore? Where will the tyranny end?
(Score: 4, Funny) by SpockLogic on Friday December 04 2020, @01:03PM (2 children)
Oh NO, the Trump virus has made me so depressed and I was looking forward to flying with my own Wally.
FYI Wally is an emotional support Alligator, I kid you not, a fucking alligator.
https://apnews.com/article/6cf8234a7a5a492eabfa4b0e319f2ec3 [apnews.com]
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday December 04 2020, @04:48PM (1 child)
A Willy is better than a Wally. A Willy is free, permanently attached, not easily lost, and more fun to play with during the flight.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @08:47PM
You mean you can watch Willy freely swim in the ocean during the flight
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @08:30PM (1 child)
They wouldn't let me take my support Mauser. It's smaller than a Mastiff. It's a rare breed, a C96. It's not even as big as a Pomeranian, and a whole lot quieter... most of the time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2020, @08:43PM
Mauser? My support animal is a good old fashioned made in the USA M1 Garand. No one I mean no one messes with me!
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @06:24AM
The dusk of the "bring your conservative idiot inside to keep you entertained" era.
Predictable in a way, they started to become annoying lately, with so much dog-whistling coming from White House.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Marand on Friday December 04 2020, @07:17AM (12 children)
I don't personally give a fuck about this specific thing, but it's an example of something that happens with any policies or goodwill: a few assholes abuse or exploit a good thing until it gets taken away or restricted so much that it's worthless, ruining it for everybody else.
Instead of trying to close all the loopholes I prefer context-based reasoning where you just go "No, you're being a jackass trying to abuse our goodwill, go fuck off" to the obvious jackasses, but that only works at small scale; any sufficiently large company is too afraid of lawsuits or bad PR and prefers to try to rules-lawyer away all possible abuses. And if any individual shows a bit of initiative and tries to stop the exploiters themselves, they'll just end up fired the moment the asshole calls corporate or whines on twitter about it. So, in an effort to stop a few extreme edge-case assholes, nobody ever gets to have nice things for long.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Marand on Friday December 04 2020, @07:38AM (6 children)
I meant to add that people really like to abuse the whole "emotional support animal" thing in general, so this is especially unsurprising. For example, I've seen someone bring in their giant dog into a bar with a no-pets policy and let it stand up so it got its paws and tongue all over the bar top. I was bartending at the time and it was a quiet night so I didn't care at first, kind of just ignored it because the dog was nice, but when it started drooling all over the counter I told her she had to keep it under control or she'd have to leave.
She declared I couldn't do that because "emotional support animal, you can't make me" and let the dog keep drooling on the bartop, so I told her to get the fuck out, and the response was "you have to let me stay, it's an emotional support dog!" like it's some magic phrase that lets you do whatever the fuck you want. Nope, doesn't work like that, especially when you can't control the animal. When the magic phrase failed to impress me and I insisted she leave she tried falling back to the other magic phrase: "YOU'RE OFFENDING ME!" like that was going to get me to back down somehow. Why, I don't fucking know, but I just laughed at that and told her to GTFO again.
Anyway, point I'm getting at is I've never had a good encounter with someone claiming need for an "emotional support animal", it's always been people trying to use it as a way to bring their pets into places they aren't allowed then starting shit if you demand proof, so I'm not even the slightest bit surprised that people were doing ludicrous shit with it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 04 2020, @12:56PM
You pretty much nailed it right there. Working dogs are trained intensively. Training starts right from birth and weaning - rambunctious animals aren't even selected. Well socialized animals are selected for training, if they meet all other requirements, like calm, and quiet.
If the dog is treated like a pet, it's not a service dog.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @01:35PM (1 child)
Modern dog owners are the worst.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday December 04 2020, @11:12PM
Yeah, quite. Especially when those owners start drooling on you.
But, now, what do you expect of modern dogs? They lost the instinct of educating their owner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Friday December 04 2020, @03:02PM (2 children)
My worst encounters were when some 20something woman brought her yappy mutt into the grocery store. She put it in the basket of her cart and pushed it around the store. It snapped and growled at everyone who got within five feet of it. She was constantly trying to get it to sit down. This was the days before COVID when it was rare to sanitize shopping carts. No employees asked her to leave. I certainly didn't want to be the next poor bastard putting my food into that cart.
The next was at a Red Lobster. Although this pet was pretty well behaved, it stunk to high heaven. I have no idea what this dog had rolled in but it was sickening. I had to ask to be moved. I was ten feet away and there was no way I could enjoy a meal while the entire section reeked of wet dog.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 05 2020, @10:20AM (1 child)
A blind friend of mine has had her service dogs attacked by untrained emotional support animals on multiple occasions. Note I said "dogs" because she had to get a new one once after an "emotional support" cat jumped out of the lady's hand at the grocery store unprovoked and clawed its eyes. The dog otherwise survived, but can't see well enough to work. So he was retired and retrained to do some other service.
My friends favorite thing though was when she sued for the money in small claims, her lawyer presented evidence of how much a new dog would cost. They lady made some exclamation like "I had no idea service animals cost that much!" The lawyer jumped all over that as even more evidence that the woman didn't have a properly trained animal, since if she did then she'd know they are expensive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 05 2020, @11:44AM
A pet is an animal with a service human.
(Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Friday December 04 2020, @02:52PM
The whole "emotional support" animal scam was all abuse. The idea was to allow ADA support animals. Bringing your dog - or whatever - along everywhere you go has nothing to do with the ADA. These were never service animals. They were always pets and the people claiming otherwise were always assholes.
I'm just pissed it took this long for anyone to do something about it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Friday December 04 2020, @03:04PM (2 children)
That is only possible in a society with high cohesion and cooperation. If you live in a "diverse" country with many people and many cultures, and some shared values and some values not so much shared, this type of strategy is not possible. Diversity is not our strength, generally speaking.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Friday December 04 2020, @04:31PM
Since it's overwhelmingly white people abusing these rules I say we stop all immigration from European nations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @05:19PM
It also depends on people showing self-restraint.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday December 05 2020, @10:10AM
I can't disagree with anything you or anyone else has so far written on this thread. Bad mannered animals, people abusing the idea of a service animal, etc.
I will provide a reason to bring animals inside the plane instead of the cargo area, though. A few years ago, I permanently move from the US to Europe and we brought our two small cats with us. It was a fucking nightmare to deal with the airline. (And they were one of the better ones for handling animals.)
First, I had one department saying I had to buy the tickets for my cats from a different department. The second department said I needed to buy tickets for the cats from the first department. I wound in a three way phone conversation listening to the two departments argue with each other for about 10 minutes. In front of me, the customer. Very inspiring as to the care and quality my cats would be getting.
As the weeks went by (as I tried to do research into how to properly deal with all this), the airline couldn't tell me how to properly prepare my animals for transport. (How big do the travel cases do they need to be in? The cases needed a certain amount of airflow, but they couldn't tell me how to properly measure it to ensure when I bring them in, they would be accepted. They didn't tell me I needed proper documentation from my vet and the state vet. Would the cats be allowed inside the cabin or would they have to go into cargo? Would the cats take different flights from us because of cargo pressurization concerns? The list goes on and on and on.)
We did get tickets for them, but I couldn't buy the tickets for them at the same I bought tickets for me and my spouse. And once I had tickets for the cats, there was no guarantee that they would let the cats on at all. Only two animals were allowed and if someone beat us to checking in on that day, then there was nothing we could do. (Thank goodness we didn't have three cats.)
I'm skipping over whole sections of the nightmare. It ended with my spouse seeing the cats being loaded into the cargo hold from her window seat. We flew to the other country and on the other side, they told us no animals had been shipped in the plane. We nearly blew a gasket. It took several hours for them to find the cats. Our cats were fine and unharmed, and they had indeed traveled in the same plane as us. "Fucking nightmare" is an understatement. Especially when you realize how high a percentage of animals are lost or killed during flight.
Again: I had done my homework. For our needs, this was one of the better ones to transport animals. It's no wonder people want to bring their four legged kids on board.
(Score: 3, Touché) by shortscreen on Friday December 04 2020, @10:45AM (6 children)
I would've thought that airlines need all the passengers they can get these days. Not being able to fill those equine-class seats is going to be a bummer for their bottom line.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 04 2020, @12:57PM
I think that passengers over 50 or 60 pounds have always been required to buy a ticket, haven't they?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @03:56PM
Mr. Ed is my co-pilot.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday December 04 2020, @04:50PM (3 children)
Will they restrict animals who travel with an emotional support human?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @10:00PM
Maybe at the vet
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @10:06PM (1 child)
Will the vet restrict animals from having emotional support humans?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @10:17PM
Maybe Gorilla Grodd needs an emotional support human ... I wonder if these highly intelligent gorillas allow humans in their facilities for emotional support purposes.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday December 04 2020, @04:44PM
Mary Had A Little Lamb is the story of a backward school that was unwelcoming of emotional support animals.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @07:41PM
Sure those slobbering poop machines are bad at supermarkets.
There's something about some entitled and fragile Wal*Mart customers. But I've heard CostCo clean-up crews get justifiably maniacal when their higher-end clientele pick a corner of the store where they think nobody's watching. Mostly for their little service buddies, I presume.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @08:31PM
U.S. Department of Justice
Civil Rights Division
Disability Rights Section
Service Animals
"Overview
...
Beginning on March 15, 2011, only dogs are recognized as service animals under titles II and III of the ADA."
...
"How “Service Animal” Is Defined
...
This definition does not affect or limit the broader definition of “assistance animal” under the Fair Housing Act or the broader definition of “service animal” under the Air Carrier Access Act.
Some State and local laws also define service animal more broadly than the ADA does. Information about such laws can be obtained from the relevant State attorney general’s office."
https://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm#:~:text=Beginning%20on%20March%2015%2C%202011,a%20person%20with%20a%20disability. [ada.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 05 2020, @03:50AM
While I also hold the ESA-liars in disdain, there are others who have invoked ESA for their pets after some truly awful experiences with the “cargo” policy. Animals lost, injured, killed because a living thing is handled the same way as duffle bag of dirty laundry.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 05 2020, @03:53AM
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