navi_jen

Okay, I get what you guys are saying, that DL is not adhering to the law. I haven't read the actual statue, and if they are violating it, I hope it is only the first step in getting the law changed. Jen out.

pvn

I don't think that restricting ESAs to animals over a certain age is necessarily a violation of the law. My point was that delta can't just decide to charge for ESAs or block them altogether.

pvn

Also, FWIW, I'm totally fine with civil disobedience as a method to change unjust laws (I encourage it, in fact), but I would not agree that the ACAA is unjust and I don't think coroporations should be engaging in civil disobedience as a matter of policy. The idea that they might put their front line employees into legal peril as a condition of their job is pretty unconscionable IMO.

reimero

The devil is in the details here. A typical ESA is not going to have any documentation whatsoever, so while the law requires ESAs to be permitted, it also permits airlines to set certain regulations. Therefore, Delta is essentially flipping the script: "prove to us that the support animal in question has been trained to hold it in or not to make a mess." A properly-trained service animal will have had this training. In all likelihood, an ESA will not. My gut says that Delta will be on legal safe ground unless and until someone manages to try to bring an ESA on a long-haul flight with documentation as described above (and I'm guessing said documentation will need to come from some outside authority.)

DelrayChris

Funny thing. People who want to park in handicapped parking spaces have to provide documentation to the DMV to obtain the handicapped placard, which is only valid for a certain period, after which renewal is required. I see no difference in adjusting the rules/laws/whatever to require owners of service animals or ESA's to do the same thing, especially when one can purchase fake "service animal" vests on the Internet.

pvn

ESAs by definition do not have documentation because there's nothing to document. Any animal can be an ESA. The documentation is for the person who needs the ESA, not for the animal. There's no "outside authority" to document them. I mean, there are people who might sell you something purporting to be ESA documentation but any such document is legally meaningless.

flyerCO

The documentation being mentioned here is for the animal. It's to prove it can last without needing to go during duration of flight over 8 hours. (Or that can go in a sanitary manner onboard)

reimero

What flyerCO said: the law allows airlines to require documentation of ESAs regarding their sanitary behavior. And since ESAs generally don't have documentation, I think Delta has a fairly good argument for their policy to stand up.

GrayAnderson

This raises an uncomfortable question: Is it possible that DL got some mixture of a DOT decision not to enforce (which, at a bare minimum, would take someone suing the DOT to reverse and thus probably take a winding path to the Supreme Court and a wonderful discussion on non-delegation doctrine) and decided that the costs of probable flight canx due to incidents like this were more than the costs of taking a fine? I don't think those fines are unlimited penalties, and...heck, I'm not with their marketing department and I know we're mostly far from the "average" traveler, but it's quite possible that Marketing came back and said "You might lose a few pax over such a fight, but most pax will say 'Not my circus not my monkeys' while you'll gain some offsetting business from people who have had bad service animal incidents".

To be fair, the policy (as presented) is potentially problematic...but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a "waiver of policy" if the pax can produce documentation about the animal's ability to "behave itself".

Adjunct to this: I really have to wonder how the press fallout would go if Delta took to just banning the more absurd ESAs (turkeys, cockatoos, and the like) at-gate. To be fair, I suspect the moral umbrage usually associated with "the big, bad airline" would be undermined by news anchors struggling to keep a straight face.

Jeff767

beachmouse

The pit bull mauling on board that made it to the news is at least a six figure settlement, IMO. I assume that insurance covered it. But when local law allows, insurance companies also have their list of 'bully breed' dogs where they will either not write policies for or increase premiums significantly if those types of dogs are present on a property.

Combine liability insurance cost increases and any civil settlements we don't know about and Delta really could be making a calculated decision that any government fine makes more sense than the other cost increases from allowing their old ESA policy to remain in place.

In terms of PR, it's also probably slightly in Delta's favor. Some of the biggest backers of state level laws criminalizing service animal fraud are disability rights groups because their members fell like poorly behaved and untrained alleged SAs and fake ESAs poison the well for people for have a legit need for highly trained and well behaved real SAs.

reimero

I'm pretty sure Delta - and the other major airlines - already have limited ESAs to dogs and cats. There might be one or two others in there. but I know there was a brouhaha several months ago when one airline denied boarding to an "emotional support peacock", and someone else tried to claim a tarantula.

The press has been pretty fair on this so far. When the airlines first started cracking down on ESAs they had a number of statistics to back up the move - statistics made available to the media, which were duly reported. Particularly notable was the comparison between "registered" service animals and ESAs: service animals travel with a percentage of the population at a fairly stable rate, whereas the number of ESAs started to skyrocket around 2015; and as the number of ESAs climbed, so did the number of incidents. They also tracked incidents involving ESAs to service animals and found that ESAs were disproportionately problematic. And finally, when they did draft these new rules, they did so with input and feedback from several disability groups to ensure that reasonable needs were being met.

The bottom line is, all the numbers point to a growing chunk of the traveling public trying to find ways to travel with the family pet without paying for it, and "emotional support" isn't all that much of a stretch. But when enough people game the system, it ruins it for everyone.

Paplover

The other issue is Delta no longer takes animals as checked luggage, only as cargo. So if you have a dog that is too large to fit under the seat, you are in a real bind if you want to fly with it. This is also a component of the abuse of ESA, if you have a midsize or larger dog, there is no other option for traveling with it.

MSPeconomist

pvn

considering the low quality of FAM hires that has been rumored, I suppose this is possible but this sounds like the worst idea I've ever heard on FT.