Feds Order Lines To Report Fatalities Among Hold-Baggage Animals

What does it take to get a federal rule made? Well, a new federal rule that requires airlines to track, manage and report statistics on pet fatalities and injuries in cargo holds resulted from four complaints of pet mistreatment or injury to the Department of Transportation last year.

The airlines transported at least two million pets during that period.
Because no one has ever gathered consolidated data on this before, neither the airlines, nor NATA, nor animal-welfare organizations can say how common problems are. We might not be able to say for sure that there's a problem, but the Department of Transportation has a solution regardless.

Of course, while the absolute numbers of pet injury or death don't seem high, without numbers no one can be sure, and if one of those numbers is YOUR beloved animal, you're going to be understandably upset.

The rule, which goes into effect June 15th, requires lines to report pet problem statistics to the U.S. Department of Transportation's Aviation Consumer Protection Division, which also tracks such bugaboos as flight delays, overbooking, lost luggage, discrimination charges, and other consumer complaints about airlines. Within about a month after that, the first report including pet data should be available from the Air Travel Consumer Report web page.

One of the complainants, as described in the Washington Times, was Sarah Stano, who was flying from Oregon to North Carolina on Delta with three cats. Delta rules would only let her take two in the cabin; the third feline was voted into the hold and, as fate would have it, used up all nine of its furry little lives by touchdown. Mrs. Stano did what any self-reliant American would do, when deprived of a cat by corporate
negligence: opened the yellow pages to "Lawyers." (The suit was ultimately settled).

"Now airlines will have to be more careful about transporting animals and realize they are responsible for their lives and that animals need air and heat," Stano told the newspaper. Of course, they may just stop accepting animals as luggage, or charge extra for them, as some of them now do for such outsize items as skis or bicycles; most airlines accept pets now, but some already don't.

The DOT has also proposed letting airlines close the "assistance dog" loophole. Originally intended for seeing-eye dogs, which help blind people conduct the daily activities the sighted take for granted, it has latterly expanded to cover animals intended to help with a much wider variety of real and imagined ills. Some passengers have abused the provision to fly their pets for free in the passenger cabin. The DOT proposal would allow airlines to charge a seat price for animals that don't fit into the carry-on baggage area under the seat in front of the passenger.

At press time, we had not been able to secure a comment from Ace Ventura.

FMI: http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/reports/