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.