Originally Posted by
ursine1
Agreed, essentially. But using current standards, this would mean that passengers with legitimate service animals would need to get a carrier-specific form completed by their doctor for each and every flight, as opposed to having a letter that provides blanket coverage for their travel needs.
Again, I think there needs to be standardization, and at the national level -- out of the hands of individual carriers.
Life coach's aren't licensed (although someone with a professional license can be a life coach), so in general, no.
People with ESRs get a letter from someone once a year, getting a renewals would be the same except the practitioner could be verified. Under the current system all that is needed is a letter on a letterhead that says it was signed by a practitioner. The Airline Employee looking at the letter has no way to verify that the letter is genuine. I think I could probably write one and sign the name of just about anyone living, dead or non-existant and the airline couldn't do anything much about it.
You could (and I'm sure some do) also fake a Service Animal since many Service Animals perform functions that aren't immediately obvious, unlike a seeing eye dog.
The Life Coach thing was a joke.