American Airlines will no longer transport selected game trophies
 

AA formally announced they will no longer transport certain game trophies. Delta is following suit.....

http://i1296.photobucket.com/albums/...skbbdu3eh.jpeg

http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel...-ban/31090331/

Actually, to be fair, Delta announced first. AA seemed to demure at the beginning given that they don't directly serve Africa, but I'm guessing they quickly came around.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/delta-ba...es-on-flights/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel...-ban/31090331/

Good, but why allow other game trophies like giraffes?

Good question... ^^

There are extra problems for airlines carrying trophies, e.g. any ungulate material from countries dealing with hoof and mouth disease, corridor disease and tuberculosis (in the case of Cape Buffalo).

There are other problems when transporting even lawfully hunted animals that require special permitting, such as CITES listed elephant and rhinocerous parts.

And I suspect airlines do not want to get caught in the middle when presented with trophy material presented as lawfully taken when they weren't. For example, a lion baited by a meat dragged by the hunter's vehicle at a national park border to adjacent land; that property turned out not to be permitted for lion hunting, and it is presumed the intent was to transport the lion carcass (once it was wounded, tracked 40 hours and shot) to yet another property which was licensed (stymied by the lion's GPS tracking collar).

They just don't want to get caught in the middle of issues like improperly taken game, hoof and mouth and other diseases, and want to avoid getting caught up on negative publicity that would affect their bottom line.

Note these airlines have stated they will no longer transport specific game trophies, not any game trophies. It's also useful to note one of the earliest airlines to put these kinds of rules in place is the airline serving a nation where significant trophy hunting occurs: South African Airlines.

Further, according to the New York Times:

and

Nothing really new here, other than AA is trying to protect itself.

General discussion about hunting or not, etc. DO NOT PERTAIN in the American Airlines fora; the OMNI/PR Forumis the proper venue. /Moderator

Does this also apply to historical animal trophies being transported for museum or scientific use?

These kind of moves strike me more as PR moves to try to get free press and/or PR moves with potential cost-cutting benefits for the airlines.

Dunno. But as one who had specific permits (USDA APHIS etc.) to import certain live and dead specimens of various kinds, I suspect it might be different with US - let scientific permits. Or not, as dealing with airline employees was occasionally challenging in spite of US Federal permits.

Undoubtedly PR given DL and UA made similar announcements. But there is risk avoidance as well, given transporting parts of CITES I animals can get problematic, and buffalo (wildebeest and others to, but I never gnu a hunter who wanted a wildebeest trophy ;)) is a problem. (In Africa, there are barrier fences, sometimes massively huge ones, to impede movement by various ungulates due to the several diseases they carry that can threaten cattle.)

AA is merely, er, trying to dodge some potential bullets.