When traveling with an incabin pet, the rules are blurry at best.
Sometimes it seems like employees of a same airline don't receive the same memo, or maybe they re-write rules overnight?
what happened to me is surreal:
I am a Diamond Elite Delta member. I travel EVERY month between JFK and Milan, always with my little dog in the cabin. I always chose Delta because they offered the easiest in cabin pet program: reserve it, pay, and go.
Just to give you an example, my dog is such a frequent flyer that every agent at JFK knows him by name!
The honeymoon was over though, on a recent trip from Milan back to JFK. The agent in Milan said I could not fly with an incabin pet in business Elite, in an Airbus. I showed her the several tags hanging on my dog's carrier, from previous flights, many of them on the Airbus. She insisted she still had to ask the crew, because, she said, they could not allow an incabin pet on a Flat Bed type aircraft (hu? we were on one just a month ago!).
Anyway, the crew allowed me in, the agent in Milan was slightly annoyed, but we left anyway.
Once in NY I wanted to write a complaint, because I think all agents of the same airline should know the rules, and I didn't want to be stuck in the same situation again.
I called the diamond desk, and I wrote a note as well.
This is where it became surreal:
over the phone, they consulted a supervisor, who admitted there had been a mistake: the only flat bed aircrafts in service for Delta are B767 and B777. The Airbus is not a flat bed (and frankly my sore back can attest to that!).
I asked if Milan could be notified, and they said they "would try to".
I got my written response from the Diamond desk insetad, and it said they conulted a supervisior who actually said this time Airbus Business Elite cannot allow incabin pets...because of the entertainment box under the seats (again, my diog fit perfectly well under the seat with the box!).
So...i am just flabbergasted: how can a dedicated desk for top customers be so unprepared and dumb, they don't even have the same rules?
and most of all, how can they not have the courtesy to write these rules on their website?
after a long research i did find a hidden paragraph on delta.com that says incabin pets cannot be booked on flat bed business elite (and a link to verify which aircraft has them- and the Airbus is not one of them). Nowhere it talks about entartaining systems, and other weird rules...

Just do the math: my ticket every month costs 7k, times 12 months for the past 6 years. My dog's fee is about $200 a pop, times 24 trips a year. Is Delta THAT stupid to force me to change airline just because they can't decide on a simple rule? is it even a real restriction?
if anyone has a similar story to tell, please come forward!