expert7700

This can't happen soon enough

At the Southwest gates in DEN tonight, we had the unfortunate experience of watching a black lab leave a trail of poop on the main carpet/terminal walkway. Several people narrowly missed steping in it. The owner went to get a bag, and scoop up each wet morsel. Then preceeded to rub the remainder of each piece into the carpet fabric.

While the owner was 'cleaning this up', the pet ran away, into the crowded gate area.

//Surprisingly no service animal vest...not even a fake internet ESA.

toomanybooks

Especially when it bites your face off, like what happened to that poor guy on DL, which is coming to its senses on this issue.

Often1

Trying to justify ticketing fraud, e.g. transporting your pet as an ESA, because you don't like the fare charged is higher than you personally wish to pay is exactly that: Fraud. When WN catches a fraud, it ought to ban the passenger.

Even the new DL rules and most certainly WN's feeble rules do not come close to what DOT authorizes carriers to require and which carriers ought to require.

The DOT rules permit the carrier to require advance notice, require medical certification from a treating professional of a specific DSM-recognized mental illness and reasonable certification of the animal's training. The second requirement is particularly important. While there seem to be plenty of people willing to generate online ESA letters, there are not that many sane people who want a medical diagnosis of a mental illness when they do not have one.

jeffandnicole

So, in other words, they paid for the dog to board?

This thread has nothing to do with that. If anything, they're encouraging people to pay.

Matchboxx

I have an ESA with an actual letter from my real doctor. I get most people's pain, but given the scrutiny my real letter gets, I almost hope they don't heighten the restrictions on WN because the existence of scammers has already led to at least two mistakes by WN that have had my real letter written off as just another one of those you can buy online for $50. I literally had to email Gary Kelly's office with all the EOBs from my doctor like, no, your employee is a judgmental idiot, I'm paying thousands of dollars for treatment.

AA actually denied my letter via their pre-approval process. I took that up to their CEO's office too and was still denied because the logo was dithery. Turns out my doctor didn't use official letterhead and just pulled the hospital's logo off of Google Images and slapped something together in Word that didn't look the most real. Still, it was real, and shutting me down because of the resolution of the logo is pretty crappy.

Moreover, my ESA is professionally trained and just lays down on the floor and doesn't move until it's time to deplane.

Rather than add scrutiny to documentation, I would say add scrutiny when the animal misbehaves on the plane. When I recently boarded WN with my ESA, a dog in the row behind us started barking up a storm. FAs tried to move the guy but he proclaimed "no! this is my ESA and I was here first!" To reduce conflict, I just moved. But the FAs should have thrown him off the plane; an actually trained ESA will not bark because another dog has boarded. Mine didn't. He looked at the other dog like "... is your problem?" and then went back to sleep.

Kevin AA

That's what I would expect an airline to do. If it looks like a fake letter since it was digitally pieced together, then they are going to assume it's fake.

The problem with this is that if there's an incident in flight, it's too late to deplane the offender, so most of the time Southwest and the victim(s) have to deal the mess after the fact. What's better is to prevent this from happening by requiring evidence of training, which you should have if you dog was professionally trained.

rickg523

Though traveling with dirty or unhouse-trained animals is distasteful to other passengers like me, it's folks like you that scambo cheapskate pet owners are really hurting. If the carriers simply required the physician's confirmation of mental problems such as you carry to qualify for ESA carriage, 80% of the cheating guttersnipes would be dissuaded from this fraud. Banning future flights for fraudulent claimants would go a long way as well.

coloneltigh

Indeed. If the animal misbehaves, then the animal gets put into a kennel. The pax gets a headbag and a blanket party. Do this and the ESA scam goes away.

kennycrudup

Huh- here's an interesting takeaway from that thread on the DL forum:

From a WP article on the pet problem airlines are facing:It probably won't help me one bit if I'm forced to get an 'E'SA owner to move (I remember what happened to that other woman who was kicked off when she tried to sit away from one of these pets), but maybe this will get some traction now?

Often1

Pulling a hospital's logo off a website and using that to create fake stationery does not give anyone a lot of confidence that the letter is anything but fake.

I don't think that we need to get into a stationery debate, but let's be serious. A doc who doesn't have some form of letterhead, including digital, is a bit off.

dlaue

Did you complain to the doctor? To the state medical board?

geo979

I agree. You have to handle the issue prior to boarding. Do we let terrorists on a flight and then deal with it mid flight? Of course not.

Often1

It has always struck me as odd that WN, which does not permit onboard medical Oxygen, does permit animals. WN's statement is clear and apparently legal.

Any Customer who requires a constant supply of compressed or liquid medical oxygen cannot travel on Southwest Airlines.

ursine1

Per FAA regulations, no airline allows customers to bring medical oxygen for use onboard.

LegalTender

And apparently you can't fly WN after speaking about "life-threatening allergies" to pet dander.

Airlines permitting compressors require some confirmation you're not likely to need extraordinary medical assistance. In other words, prove you can survive the flight with just cabin 02.