"Frequent flyer" complaint to AA threatens dog and cat rescue program
 

http://virginislandsdailynews.com/ne...rays-1.1500374

JUNE 15, 2013 UPDATE: AA has ended its sponsorship of the program.

http://stthomassource.com/content/ne...-wings-program

That frequent flier may be reading this!

Pets from Paradise Threatened
 

For many years AA has supported the Pets from Paradise Program that transports homeless pets from the USVI to the mainland. This program has saved hundreds of lives of stray pets over the years. Now, according to the events below, AA is considering stopping this wonderful program because of the complaint of one passenger. Let's hope AA continues this great program that saves the lives of hundreds of pets a year.

http://virginislandsdailynews.com/ne...rays-1.1500374

Let's please not start another thread about animals on planes. Views are going to be highly polarized, brown stuff will hit the fan and it will all end in tears :)

Were you actually there and do you know how much impact to check in was caused by a group turning up each with a dog to check in?

The complaint of the passenger may well be reasonable ; suppose every passenger decided to take a dog.

If this group did cause a long delay to the checking in of passengers, it would seem reasonable to assess whether some changes or limits on how many can be taken at any one time should perhaps be imposed

It's not evident from the story that the animals are even in the cabin. Are there really people who get that riled up about dogs and cats being kept in the cargo hold? Especially when the options are either 1) cargo hold animal or 2) dead animal?

No... and not even the complainant in this case.... It seems the number of folks checking in animals may have caused delays for everyone else...Does it take longer?? I don't know.

If however this program causes unusually long delays at check in for others then - as said in the other thread - perhaps some "per-flight" limits might be sensible?

(Or some special arrangements made???)

Somebody corrected me if I'm misunderstanding something.

AA's PR regional office agreed to waive the pet fee for animals being flown from this shelter to the mainland.

There was a large group checking-in animals/kennels at the airport. (Hold animals, from the photo).

There was a FF behind them that got upset at the delay *at the check-in counter*

The FF complained to AA corporate about delays at the counter (due to hold animals on fee waivers).

AA corporate may now revoke the shelter's fee waiver.

All the statements seem accurate

What is missing is that AA could choose to revoke the fee waiver at any time anyway; if AA did choose to revoke it, I would suspect that there are other events that may have occurred or would be using this as an excuse

e.g. perhaps the shelter is causing problems by having large numbers being taken on any one flight - I would be very surprised if it does not take a lot longer to check person + animal in rather than just the person

AA "may" choose to give all passengers on AA142 next monday a pony

Sounds right to me.

What I'm curious about is whether this "frequent flyer" was checking-in at the business class counter or was in the regular line with the kettles... I guess it's possible that one or more people in the group were traveling in business class or have elite status (rarer here than on the mainland), but I somehow doubt it.

I've never checked in an animal, but everything at the STT airport is just plain slow, period... Combine a predominently leisure travel market (inexperienced travelers, lots of checked bags), workers who are on island time, all passengers having to go through customs screening for "domestic" flights back to the mainland, along with all the normal airport issues, and everything can drag on forever (hence why all the flights that land here from the mainland advise passengers to arrive 3 hours early for their return flights).

Of course, all this is known to anyone who has flown down here more than once, so I'm wondering if the complainant hasn't been here before and thinks the slow movement of the line was due to the dogs and not just STT being STT.

There is a lot of manual paperwork involved when you check a dog as baggage. Seeing these are shelter dogs where the passengers checking them in don't know the procedures or the numbers (a seasoned passenger can tell them "my dog weighs 78 pounds including the kennel or "it's 11 points" or even "no need to fill all this out again because it's still attached to the kennel from the last flight" which speeds thing up considerably) this can easily take twenty minutes and more per animal even at, say, DFW.
Combine that with the general situation described by usviflyer above and the "frequent flier" in line behind the group getting upset is understandable.

edit: There is limitations in place on how many dogs can be taken on any given flight already. The compartments only hold a finite number of crates. I once had to rebook and wait one day when trying to fly from MXP to JFK as there were a bunch of dog show attendees checking in dogs who turned up at the airport earlier than me and there was no more space for my dog.

Do we really know if it was the result of only one complaint?

Gotta love this math though
"Vasconcellos said more than 150 animals have been flown out of the territory by American Airlines in the last year, which means the lives of about 300 animals have been spared. When an animal is flown off-island, it frees up space in the St. Thomas shelter, saving two lives, she said."

Doesn't it also prevent an animal in another shelter from being spared?
After all, there are plenty of animals in the states that go unadopted without the need to import them from USVI.

This is the part that I don't understand, are there really insufficient unwanted animals available for adoption so they have to be imported to meet the demand?

This feels a lot more like a PR exercise than a genuine net improvement in the welfare of animals.

Pets With Wings
 

As a long-time and frequent traveller between Boston and St. Thomas, I can assure you that:

1. despite a dedicated AA Priority line, the check-in process at the STT AA ticket counter is slow at best (no fault of the AA staff; all checked baggage, which is usually what tourists have, must be checked-in at the counter and then removed by the pax to take through customs);

2. rescue animals in the Virgin Islands are in desperate need of stateside homes (this program has turned around an awful situation when 'dumpster' dogs used to be the norm in the US Virgin Islands);

3. I have never met a dog (or cat) with Elite status (or even a Citibank Aadvantage credit card) which would entitle them to any of my cherished benefits.

American Airlines -- keep this program going (and congrats for having done so to-date)!