Thanks for the reply. For me, this just moves the inquiry though. If these fake service animals are so disruptive, why don’t the gate agents and FAs do more about them? Or if they disrupt air travel so much, why don’t airlines take a harder line and make gate agents and FAs do more? Why don’t they make it part of the pilot’s job?
Under the DOT regulations, emotional support animals don’t need any training at all and they can be lots of animals besides dogs.
The regs do require owners of emotional support animals to provide evidence from a health care provider that the animal satisfies a mental health care need if the airline requests it. LSLGuy is basically telling us that his airline doesn’t seem to ask for this information. I don’t know if other airlines have stricter policies.
Emotional support animals don’t have to wear diapers but they can’t just poop anywhere. If they start pooping everywhere, they can be denied boarding or prevented from flying on the airline again. It seems like a diaper is a wise precaution if you’re emotional support animal isn’t reliably housebroken.
Service animals don’t need their own separate seats or tickets. Airlines can’t charge their owners to fly them. That last bit is why the potential for fraud is so high.
People abusing the system certainly do undermine support for people who really need service animals. But people who rely on service animals oppose documentation requirements because they would face the risk that airlines would reject service animals they really depend on. I can see why they might not be leading the charge for higher documentation standards. Their view might be let a hundred fake service animals on board rather than deny entry to one single legitimate service animal.
Now the OP has been answered, can I please ask why Monkey Butlers can’t travel in carriage class while I’m up in First?
When I travel I want my immediate staff to be there when I disembark the aeroplane; who else is going to carry my hand luggage? Not the airline staff, that’s for sure.
My view is that right now the vast majority of pets as fake service animals (“FSA”) are a mild irritant to the other passengers.
In general, no corporation wants to act as the police force for a government regulation. That’s a losing game for them no matter how skillfully played. That’s one of the reasons the airlines bitched like heck about pre-TSA airport security but ran screaming the other way when DOT suggested maybe they should just take over that function themselves. :eek:
So we walk the tightrope of mildly pissing off the 10 people on a plane near the occasional disruptive FSA versus massively pissing off the ever-increasing number of FSA owners. While another 130 people watch and decide who’s side they back. Very few people with the mindset to cheat react well to being called on it; their vast sense of entitlement far exceeds their tiny sense of shame. As well, given the current reality of lax enforcement industry-wide, the cheater can truthfully claim “it was OK on my last 10 flights; what’s wrong with you people today?” As they reach for their twitter app hoping to create the next viral sensation.
All in all, FSAs are a PR minefield for airlines. I’d bet our HQ wishes like heck they’d just go away. Watching the larger society, where more and more people drag more and more pets to ever less pet-appropriate venues I’d say that’s not gonna happen.
Taking a different tack:
The FAA takes safety very seriously. So that kind of stuff is mandatory and has 99.9999% compliance industry-wide. If the rule says no kids in exit rows, then by golly, there are no kids in exit rows anywhere any time. We enforce it and people comply with it. They grumble, they say it’s stupid, but they go along.
Sadly DOT lacked the chutzpah to take a similar hard-over approach to both real and fake service animals. In their defense, they’re not really in the position to mandate a national register, national ID cards, and all the rest that would be necessary to stop the entitled jerk from getting their compliant doctor to issue a service animal letter for their precious Fluffy. The doctor has a need to give good customer service too, so he/she isn’t the villain here either.
Bottom line:
At the end of the day, civilization can only be a little more civilized than its average citizens. We can’t legislate civic spirit.
IMO we’re heading the wrong way on this stuff and picking up speed.
My old sig line applies: The day we stopped being “citizens” and started being “consumers” was the Beginning of the End of Western Civilization.
Enforcing your airline’s policy isn’t acting as a police force for governmental regulation. The regulations don’t tell airlines to ban any animals. Airlines could allow hippopotamuses if planes had big enough doors. This is about enforcing the airline’s policy of requiring passengers to pay for the privilege of stowing pets under their seats or checking them as luggage rather than allowing passengers to falsely claim that pets are service animals permitted to fly for free. I think the rest of your post is basically saying that the risks and costs to the airline of calling out suspect emotional support animals is worse than the disruption caused by fake service animals. If that’s the case, airlines seem to be suggesting that fake service animals on the plane aren’t really as big a deal as you think they are. Maybe if the problem gets worse, airlines will take the risks of enforcing their rules more stringently.
Apparently there is a DOT advisory committee looking at the issue of service animals on airplanes. Who knows what they will recommend or what the DOT will do in response.
So, it is better for the handicapped to live in a world where they constantly need to prove with authorized documentation that they are entitled to use their aids? I walk with a white cane. I’m glad I don’t have to hear people saying “If you prove that you’re really blind, I’ll help you find your way”.
At the airport, they ae overly solicitous. Approaching the airline checkin desk, and sometimes at the front door, they see me coming, and an employee of the airport or the airline escorts me all the way from there to my seat. I have enough vision that I can find my own way, and sometimes I even have to refuse a wheelchair.
Airports and airlines have dedicated staff to do just that. In Dubai, there is even a designated terminal lounge, for “special handling” passengers who have any kind of disability or difficulty, even just old age, with personnel there to specifically address their needs. Nobody ever asks for any documentation to prove that you are afflicted with whatever is the cause of your disability.
By the way, I’ve been in about 30 airport terminals in the past two years, and have not yet encountered a single passenger with a service dog, either genuine or fake. So I don’t think we need to worry yet about cheaters.
That’s very true. I know my two younger pugs would want attention from everyone on the plane. Still, it’s too bad there’s not a pet friendly airline that would let you buy a seat for your caged/crated pet.
In case anyone wants to know, Enterprise car rental will let you have pets in their cars, but if there’s a mess you may have to pay a cleaning fee.
I’m sad to say, the word “yet” describes the problem.
Every self important idiot with a dog, cat or duck will start claiming they need special treatment. And they will win; the slippery slope is too tough. Let’s say, person A has 50% vision. Person B has 25%. Person C has a support duck.
Against which one of these can you discriminate?
Of course, and in my opinion, the latter is taking the piss.
I’m very glad we both live in a world where you get the assistance you legitimately need and legitimately deserve as a member of our society. It’s good that your “badge” of qualification, the white cane, isn’t widely used by others to cadge freebies.
The issue with fake service animals is growing. Albeit from a small base. The airline doesn’t care for it’s own sake except to the degree people are getting free carriage for what ought to be paying cargo. It will truly matter to the airlines if and when it truly matters to the rest of their customers.
With luck neither of us will see a backlash against real special needs accommodations if/when things rise to the level where there is a backlash against fake special needs accommodations.
The only thing I like less than a world full of cheaters is a world full of people who’re looking under every rock for the cheaters they’re sure are in there somewhere.
This rates my current sig.
Maybe you’re having some trouble distinguishing idle commentary from a serious complaint about the treatment of real dogs v sissy dogs at stores. But sure store personnel could have a good reason to discriminate in favor of sissy dogs, like all thost sissy service dogs…or maybe just not really GAS about anything their boss doesn’t given them a hard time about and let their own biases and laziness prevail. Latter is more likely IMO. Or maybe sissy dog owners are just more aggressive about bringing dogs in on average.
You were responding to me, but I think that’s what I already said. But same as 1, there’ so little common culture now in the US maybe some people don’t realize how completely bonkers and removed from any reality it is for some people (me for example) to think about lying and saying their dog is a service animal to get it on an airplane. The whole topic is a joke basically to me. And I don’t personally recall ever seeing a dog on a plane, even a legit service dog, though I’m sure it happens. Then again I hate flying and seldom do since I stopped having to do it for work.
In the absences of any regulations airline policy would be simple. As it was since I was a kid: Except for obviously blind people with seeing eye dogs any and all animals go in the cargo compartment, period, amen. And are charged accordingly.
It was the Feds who foreclosed that approach and demanded the airlines find a way to accommodate certain animals without doing anything about ameliorating the incentive to cheat or the consequences of that cheating for the other passengers. Leaving the airlines holding the PR bag.
Had there not been a simultaneous huge upswing in people dragging their pets everywhere with them the current regulations would be non-events. It’s the confluence of those two trends which is having unforeseen consequences for everyone.
You’re right: current reality is the rank and file workers don’t aggressively enforce corporate policy. Whether that’s the wisdom of the front line workers sensibly waiving draconian crap from a blinkered HQ or that’s rampant sloppiness on the part of lazy workers not wanting to deal with angry scenes is a matter of some debate. It’s probably both at one time or another.
Agree that if the volume of FSA gets larger, we will see more instances of pet problems on airplanes and eventually that’ll trigger a reaction from the rest of the customers and eventually Congress and/or the DOT. The first time somebody successfully sues the airline for a dog bite from an FSA we’ll see at least that airline go hard over.
The FSA “issue” doesn’t really bother me as a worker. Not my problem. Or at least almost never my problem. When on rare occasion it becomes one I handle it. I hear about far more stories than I witness.
As a general customer in the retail world I’m not a big fan of dogs in stores and restaurants. Not my style.
I continue posting to the thread not because I’m ape over this “issue.” It’s a lazy afternoon at home and I’m the only person here with the occupational POV on the issue. We’ve had flight attendants on SDMB before although they moved on a couple years ago. I’d be curious to see their perspectives in public vice what I hear backstage. As well as that of gate agents.
OK, when that happens, amend the rules to mitigate the adverse effects that arise to a burdensome leve…
Would your ideal society be one in which people are left alone to interrelate with civilized liberty, and step in with rules when harm is caused by excessive abusers? Or would you rather have a bunch of imaginative busybodies (aka self-important idiots) making rules and laws to cover every imaginable scenario, and police every event to see if anybody is violating it?
So far, I have yet to be inconvenienced (much less harmed) by any of your self-important idiots. At least, not of that kind. Despite the fact that from my experience and observation, self-important idiots seem to be disproportionately abundant among pet owners.