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Allergic Alaska Passenger Rebooked Due to Cabin Cat
Ryan Boyd August 08, 2018
15-year-old Alaska Airlines passenger Kaisa Kotch was forced to rebook her flight after having an allergic reaction to a cat within the cabin of the aircraft shortly after boarding.
“We do our best to accommodate all individuals when they are traveling on Alaska Airlines,” said Tim Thompson, Alaska Airlines’ external affairs manager. “In this situation, staff followed our process in working to provide as much distance onboard as possible between a traveler with allergies and another traveler with an animal in the cabin. While attempts were made to assist both guests, the traveler with allergies elected to be re-accommodated on a later flight.”
To read more on this story, go to The Arctic Sounder.
[Photo: Shutterstock]
Why can’t this be scheduled? If a person with a life threatening allergy is already reserved on the flight then don’t allow that in the cabin - at the time of reservation. If a pet is already reserved on the flight, then don’t allow the person with the life threatening allergy to reserve. It isn’t difficult for computers to do this. An incentive not to cheat would be that if your profile shows in the system as having a life threatening allergy to cats, you might not be able to book the flight you want if there is already a cat on it.
Humans above animals. Anybody that says differently has their priorities backwards. When are the adults going to come back in the room and take over again?
On the pet side, there probably should be a better process for people with true allergies (not just an intolerance or dislike) to report that to the airline, along with the severity (whether they can't be on the same plane, or not near each other), and then the airline could accommodate and plan for those situations before boarding. Short of that, other than disallowing pets in the cabin completely (which is a different argument), someone is going to be re-accommodated when both end up on the same flight. Automatically defaulting to the passenger or pet is in my opinion wrong, but it would depend on the circumstances (such as who booked first), or sometimes people can be moved around, it all depends. On the peanut front - anyone who thinks that handling peanuts and handling pets on the flight are the same - are you kidding? No one is going to have a major inconvenience if no peanuts are allowed on the flight. Banning consumption of peanuts is at best a minor inconvenience, especially since they could still be carried in a sealed container. Banning pets from the plane does create a major inconvenience if they're already on the plane...
Peanut allergies vs. animal allergies. It's amazing how they're handled completely differently. I still completely disagree with the Emotional Support Animal crap. Fido isn't going to put on your oxygen mask when the plane's pressure envelope is compromised, the masks drop, the pilot makes a nosedive for 10,000 feet, and you have a panic attack. If you are so emotionally unstable that you need to carry a sentient being around to keep you calm, you need a real human companion for air travel.
I'd much rather share the cabin with a cat than with a screaming baby.