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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
(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.