martonikaj

I was on an AS flight ATL->SEA yesterday (on a brand new 739), and for the first time in all of my flying I was able to hear a dog barking in the cargo area. What I assume was a large dog based on the bark was really losing it in the first ~45 min from boarding to takeoff, and then again for the final 45 min of the flight. That's 1.5 hours of a dog barking over the course of the ~5.5 hour flight — not horrible, but not how I wanted to experience my 7 a.m. flight.

Everyone in F could hear it very clearly, and I presume that was the case further back in the plane as well. It was loud enough that people were making comments, though the FAs never acknowledged it.

Just being curious of the situation I tweeted at @AlaskaAir, which is always very responsive, and they indicated there wasn't any way to handle this sort of situation after the flight.

As a long-time dog owner (but not one who has brought a dog in cargo) I can completely understand that some dogs bark, but you'd think there would be some way to raise this to AS so they can talk to anyone who had a dog traveling in the cargo and could be issued some sort of warning about bringing a disruptive dog on the flight? Things are obviously a bit more difficult here when the dog is in the cargo and not in the cabin, but I'm still surprised this isn't something that can be handled.

AKCuisine

Actually, it's fairly often that you can hear dogs barking in cargo when you're seated in first class. Usually you can hear them during the boarding process and soon after landing.

Traveling to and from Alaska it's a frequent occurrence. Many people traveling in and out of the state are transporting their dogs - and not all of them break the rules to have their dog in the cabin as an "emotional support animal."

jiburi

Minor inconvenience, maybe, but I love the airline which still provide transport of pets (and can be a part of your baggage allowance). Pets are every bit a family member.

DL beginning this year, is no longer transporting pets as checked baggage, except via a DL cargo service. (Service and Military family pet excepted). Fees I checked are $238.13 to $335.75 one way for small Terrier, or $360 to $386 one way, for German Shephard. SEA to ATL

In comparison, AS charges mere $100 flat rate (or count toward your carry on).

AS is definitely a pet friendly airline in my comparison check.

Jiburi

missamo80

They can't do anything about this during the flight, just like if a kid is going ballistic somewhere on the plane you can only do so much. Plus how would the owner have any way to know they had a "disruptive dog" pre-flight? Maybe it was the dog's first flight? Maybe it normally travels fine and today was just a bad day, just like for humans?

This is why I always fly with earplugs.

Neil

EIPremier

Usually this only occurs when flying on Airbus aircraft.

wrp96

I had the same thought.

lalala

Our previous basset could be heard from the time we dropped him off at cargo until we took off. He would start baying as soon as the wheels were down. He had a huge bark.

beckoa

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's BB: Mozilla/5.0 (BB10; Kbd) AppleWebKit/537.35+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.3.2.858 Mobile Safari/537.35+)

Sounds like quite a few flights to/from ANC. And yes dogs are below F.

Imagine the noises from OME in a few days

flyupfrnt

I Don't think I'd fly my Dog. More concerned for the dog than the noise or disruption. Can you imagine how scary it must be for the Dog?

ou81two

You were carrying a set of 50 cent earplugs that would completely block out that noise, right? I mean, before you bothered to make a thread to passively aggressively post on here you did that, correct.

Also, do you have any data showing that there was only one dog below on the flight. I've taken hundreds and hundreds of flights on Alaska and NEVER had this happen.

My general suggestion is that you accept that you're flying in a public form of transportation, things wont' be idea and you should learn how to deal with it.

Again, a very inexpensive set of in ear buds would block out that, chatty people, screaming babies, etc.

martonikaj

Oh I know they can't do anything during the flight, or even before the flight if the dog is calm on the ground. But I don't think it's unreasonable to talk to the people who had a dog in the cargo if it was barking for a large portion of the flight.

martonikaj

Actually I have both passive noise canceling in-ear monitors, as well as on-ear noise cancelling headphones. Both are usually sufficient for any sort of noise I've encountered on a flight.

Also not sure how passive aggressive I'm being here? I'm simply noting it wasn't the best experience and wanted to know if there was some sort of way for the airline to investigate the problem.

Data? No. Just my ears indicating that it was the same dog the whole time. The sound and cadence of the bark was pretty clear to me that it was just one dog.

I'm not in any way thinking that flying on commercial aircraft is ever silent or free from annoyance (clearly, as I travel with noise-canceling headphones), but I don't think it's too much to ask Alaska to investigate the barking dog after the fact and talk to the owner about it.

martonikaj

I agree. Unless I knew that my dog was completely calm in that kind of situation (though to know until you try it, I suppose) it'd be tough to stick them down there. Especially for such a long flight.

martonikaj

That's steep! Reading over the help page it did seem like AS was pretty lenient on pets, both in the cabin and cargo.

tusphotog

I sincerely doubt you heard a dog barking while in flight. The noise insulation on 737s is good, but not THAT good. The engines and slipstream will drown out most of that external noise--heck you can't even hear the flap motors unless you're within a row or two of them.

I've had several flights where it sounds like we're a flying kennel and as soon as the throttles advance, the dogs are drowned out until we're on the ground.