Originally Posted by
6rugrats
You are really going off on a tangent here, but I am glad you recovered from having to eat a meal that you were allergic to in a country where you did not speak the language. Perhaps in the future making a list of some common phrases explaining any medical problems would be helpful?
LOL talk about going off on a tangent. I obviously attempted to prepare myself for just this situation. But I'm not going to continue on this track.
The point is, allergies are threats to human health, whether life-threatening or not. If a being that is lesser than a human (i.e. a dog) is threatening human health, it's obviously my opinion that the human stays and the dog goes.
Originally Posted by
cepheid
Not only are you splitting hairs, but you are incorrect. If the dog is a service animal, getting rid of the dog is a direct threat to the health of the dog owner, exactly because the dog is a service animal. The dog could act as the eyes of a blind person, sense an imminent grand-mal seizure in an epileptic, prevent a psychotic break in an emotionally unstable person, or any other number of actions that, if missing, jeopardize the health of the dog owner.
So, getting rid of the dog could very well be a direct threat to the health of the dog owner.
And the above is exactly why we maintain you are wrong in that inference.
The only issue here is with the convenience of person A versus person B, not with dog versus health.
It's avoidable in two ways: the dog owner takes a different flight, or the allergy-sufferer takes a different flight. Now, again, what makes the convenience of one more important than the convenience of the other? As before, it should be decided based on the standard rules: s/he who refuses to fly shall be the one to bear the burden of the inconvenience; otherwise, status/fare/check-in time shall be the determiner.
Because the dog was a service animal, and service animals are allowed in the cabin. Travel in the hold is stressful on the animal and even animals whose service begins after the flight still need to be at peak performance.
Even if I grant you all of the points you make in this post, which I'll admit are mostly quite good, it doesn't change the OP's situation - in that case, it's quite clear there was absolutely no need (for support of human health or otherwise) for that dog to be in the cabin. In this case, the human's health should have taken precedence over the dog's presence.