Originally Posted by stephem

We have a small dog that we bring fairly regularly with us and over the years the process on Alaska has ebbed and flowed but never been as quick and smooth as other airlines. Lately we have been flying between LAX and our place in Oregon a lot and have had several times where we added the pet in advance and the desks in Portland, LAX or Seattle struggled to take payment and/or get the system to reflect we could bring the pet on. So a couple of times we got stopped boarding and told we hadn't paid (we had), another time the agent up front at check in gave up and told us to just take the pet on but to date we hadn't had a situation where we very nearly missed boarding our flight. But in particular we were finding that on connecting we have to go through a whole additional round of processing the pet in cabin and even show the credit card charge on our phone.

For Thanksgiving week we flew LAX-SEA-BZN and return. On the outbound, the check in agent in LAX couldn't get the payment to process and finally just told us to board and tell the gate agents to call him if there was a problem. For the return, the check in team in BZN had no idea what they were doing and kept saying they had to call Seattle for instructions only to say then they couldn't seem to fix the problem. At one point I asked the agent to please check all our bags in and send them on the belt for loading and I would go with my three kids to the gate and my wife would try to settle the issue (the dog was on my wife's separate PNR). At that point things got a bit contentious and the agent went from friendly to "dont tell us how to do our jobs." So i went to the gate and immediately approached the two agents there and explained what was going on. They rolled their eyes, not at me but at their colleague up front and one of the guys immediately ran back and pulled my wife through the security line to try to fix things (we ultimately were the last to board). One bag did not make it and it was really only through some herculean efforts that my wife was allowed to board. The agent up front had unchecked her and so her seat from Bozeman to Seattle and onto LAX was cancelled and they had to do some gymnastics at the gate as they were about to close the door to get her flights reinstated. In the end, the agent up front refused to send my wife's bag out to have it gate checked (they can actually do this, the gate agents told us) and so we had a bit of unprofessional behavior toward us but among colleagues as well. In the end I found out what happened and why the check in agent had so many challenges (user error and need for more training that caused the spiral out of control, but also something the LA check in agent did that caused the problem initially), but the process is not working smoothly for us at most of the west coast airports we use.

I'm planning to send a note to the executive offices about the issues, we fly enough that we're 5 MVP Golds and we could fly Delta or American on these routes when we bring a pet. I happen to like the AS experience and at T6 LAX it is a dream to fly them if you have Clear.

My question here is whether other people who fly routinely with a pet in cabin are finding the process at the airport is jumbled like we are? They really should invest in something akin to a FF# for pets that would allow the pet in cabin to be booked (and paid) in advance but at least they need to streamline the online process the agents are using.