When I see someone needing an emotional support animal to fly, I assume they are a veteran with service-acquired PTSD and have been matched with an PTSD ESA.
If they risked so much to protect my freedom, I can put up with their ES animal on my flight. I haven’t been disappointed yet.
The vast majority of "ESA"s I’ve encountered are high strung noisesome irritating little puffballs carried by high strung noisesome irritating Karens of either gender.
Stopping that entitled nonsense is what will restore respect for the genuinely emotionally handicapped, and most especially those veterans who came by their problems honestly in our service.
I think this is (mostly) the case. Pet-human relationships quite naturally develop mutual affection and respect; each gets a measure of emotional support from the other.
Which of course means that more than a claim of emotional support should be necessary to bring a pet on board an airliner.
You can be confident some number of these will no longer be well behaved once in the crowded company of many strange humans and a bunch of other nervous pets.
Then again…I know a young woman who suffered a traumatic brain injury and is lucky to be alive. She looks totally normal, but her balance is so horrible that she can’t walk across a room without folling over without the dog that’s been trained to heel to her side, giving constant input so she can stay upright.
Her dog is exquisitely trained for its job and wears a vest. Yet people question her situation since she looks so damn normal.
Then that dog is serving a physical need. It’s not an emotional support animal.
Equally scary…
“Don’t worry, the gun’s not loaded”
“Don’t worry, my dog would never bite anyone”
I don’t disagree. It’s what I think to myself so I can take the high toad-I know very few ‘Muffy’s are genuine ESAs.
No way do they get a pass on this. They’re some of the worst offenders!
I suppose well behaved pets are like True Scottsmen.
One is a tool intended for killing, the other is a potentially aggressive animal. Not equally scary AT ALL. 
So true. Maybe @BippityBoppityBoo should be the new Secretary of the DOT.
Which facts are you referring to? The fact that tens of thousands of ESAs fly a year and only a handful are a problem? Or that the airlines look to gain $50 million in pet fees since they outlawed emotional support animals?
Real nice. Say this to the face of veterans that suffer from invisible diseases or women that have been assaulted and suffer from PTSD.
Unfortunately this is not the case. The new DOT rules explicitly calls out and disqualifies service guide dogs in training.
Sez you - I was bit as a small child and have a phobia.
I actually use a gun analogy to explain why small dogs scare me as much as large ones - you don’t casually brush off small guns that are pointed at you because of their size, do you?
Honestly I’m glad that I don’t often encounter legitimate guide dogs much - well-behaved or not, they freak me right out. But they serve a necessary purpose and I’ll bit my tongue. Having one of these so-called ESAs acting uncontrolled in my vicinity, though, would be a nightmare and I shouldn’t be forced to put up with it.
I wonder what the number of flight attendants out of 5 that have experienced an incident with a problematic passenger or child. Ban em all?
You’re right. They should also ban any types of nuts because I’m deathly allergic and can die if one gets in my mouth. This is a nightmare situation I shouldn’t be forced to put up with it.
Also, they should ban alcohol because it kills so many people every year and some people are trying to be sober and it might trigger them to start drinking again. /s
You’re absolutely right - people should be banned from spraying a cloud of finely ground nuts into the air around them wherever they go. If they did that it should be considered assault and possibly a terrorist action.
Shockingly, you also should be prevented from spraying alcohol everywhere, though the punishments should not be as harsh, because doing so would not actually be a murderous act.
Before you try to construct any more analogies, keep in mind that a well-trained quiet unobtrusive dog would be something I would unhappily put up with, much like the alcoholic would be sad around the airline’s alcohol and the allergic would side-eye the peanuts. However if somebody’s dog is out of control, then like with the alcohol or the peanuts, they shouldn’t be allowed to shove it down your throat.
A small gun can kill you. A small dog cannot.
That’s not to say small dogs aren’t a problem. Anecdotally I’ve found small dogs to often be much, MUCH worse behaved, because when your 60 lbs husky barks and lunges at someone that’s a clear threat, but when your 5 lbs chihuahua does the same thing you can laugh it off. But if this leads your little rat dog to escape and come lunging at my dog when we are on a walk, you bet your ass I’ll punt your little rat back across the street.
Tell that to my phobia. (Note that it won’t listen, because it’s a phobia.)
The point wasn’t to say that dogs are as dangerous as guns; of course they aren’t. (Even the biggest dog could at best tie with the smallest gun.) The point was to counter a blithe assertion that of course dogs can’t be scary don’t be silly.
Some people are scared of different things than you. Fact of life.
Large dogs that attack people with that ferocity get put down. Tiny dogs’ owners laugh and tell you that sure, he’ll bite you every change he gets, and it’s really funny to watch because it only sometimes draws blood.
And yes, I’ve had a dog owner tell me that their tiny dog bites, and that it rarely breaks the skin (at least through clothes). I’m not making that up.