Originally Posted by
BOSTransplant
On a similar note, there was a woman with a dog not in a carrier on flight 2836 from BOS to ATL on Wednesday. She boarded, saw that the seat next to her was (temporarily) open, and let her dog jump up on it! She even said something like "Ooh, maybe you'll get your own seat!" A few minutes later, the owner of that seat boarded. She didn't say anything, but what if she had been allergic to dogs or something? Completely unacceptable to let a dog jump on a seat. This wasn't even a little wiener dog. It was a small-medium sized dog. Looked like a young labdradoodle, but I'm not sure.
This whole "comfort" animal thing is out of control. If you don't have a legitimate physical limitation, your animal needs to stay in a carrier, or at your house.
Too bad the airlines are too cowardly to try to stop the practice. If I was allergic to dogs and saw one sitting in my seat, I'd demand that the dog and its owner be offloaded. Then again, people with "comfort" animals seem to have more passenger rights than the rest of us, so I'd probably be the one left at the gate.