Originally Posted by
Jaimito Cartero
The dog is not lost. Delta did not lose it. It missed it's connection, and is not roaming the tarmac, or riding Marta and begging for treats. If you have
joint custody of the dog, great! How difficult is that to communicate through a post, by saying,
I sent our dog to my ex GF, BF, Partner etc.
Just as adults miss connections, so do luggage and pets. I'm not excusing the lack of communication on DL's part. Your title is misleading, as many of these
Chicken Little threads seem to be. Hopefully your
friend will receive the pooch tomorrow in good shape.
From Deltas Pet Traveling
web page:
If your pet's journey takes it on more than one airline, there are some additional considerations you'll want to think about ahead of time. Arrange for your pet's flights to allow for plenty of extra time to change planes—because your pet can't just sprint to the next gate or airport terminal the way you can.
Sigh. As for your comments on the way I relayed this story, as I said before,
PM me; If the moderators agree with you and think I'm misleading Flyertalk, then they can change the thread title and I won't mind one bit.
The quote that you pulled from the DL website is one that I read even before I called DL cargo to make the reservation. DL gave me no information on what a minimum connection would be, but my hunch is that they wouldn't have even made the reservation for the dog if that didn't meet a legal connection time for pets traveling alone.
Right now my main irritant is how un-communicative DL was about this. I have confirmation from PDX cargo, who called ATL for me, that the dog was fed and watered, so I'm not worried about that. Honestly, now I'm wondering if they'll remember to send her to BUF in the morning; granted that is a bit of an over-reaction on my part, but after getting the run-around from them tonight I think it's a valid concern. Time will tell.
Originally Posted by
Kibison
I understand your frustration completely. Transporting a pet can be very stressful. Some ailines don't understand that pets can be loved as much as children. DL is one of them. They did a terrible job transporting my dog from ATL to FCO a couple of years ago.
When the dog died (of natural causes-at home), I decided that I would not have a pet for the first time in my life solely because I could not handle the stress of transporting it to various places around the world. Not fair to the pet, not fair to me.
I would never have transported the animal without being on the flight. There were several times with DL in the past where I had to threaten to walk off the plane (and delaying its departure for 30 minutes while my bags were off-loaded) because the only checked luggage not to be on board was the dog.
It was amazing how quickly they would "find" my dog to avoid a late departure.
I'm sorry to hear about that, and after today I can definitely relate. I think the biggest mistake on my part was trusting DL (or any other airline) to successfully transport her on her own. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have just taken her to BUF myself.