Sounds like an awful situation. When shiiping pets via Priority Pet, there is specific paperwork involved. A copy of that paperwork is given to the captain with the rest of the flight paperwork. It indicates the passengers name and seat and also the flightw little fido is scheduled to fly on. There is usually a notation as well on the flight attendant paperwork regarding this.

Whenever I see this, I make it a point to personally look and see if a pet was dropped off. If so, I then either personally tell the passenger or have the FA tell the passenger that their pet has indeed boarded. Upon pushback, I confirm with the ramp staff that the animal was indeed boarded.

I preflighted a plane once and found a large case of frozen chicks sitting in our animal bin. It seems the ground staff in MSN didn't notice the night before and when the power was removed from the plane, so was the animal bay heat. It was February. You do the math. Since then I've gone out of my way to make sure that we as a crew do everything we can to make sure the pets makes it onboard. Even on the saab. I can't comment on every crew however.



AZJ