It’s much harder than it used to be to travel with an emotional support animal for free, after new airline and Department of Transportation rules attemped to discourage the practice.
However you can still pay a ‘pet in cabin’ fee for an eligible animal that fits in the storage are beneath your seat. A little number of these are allowed on board, it’s best to have a reservation in advance, and it takes the place of your carry on bag.
One woman in Atlanta – 89 years ago, and just out of the hospital the day before – found herself stranded after a mix up on Delta Air Lines. She seemingly paid the pet in cabin fee but the flight wasn’t updated to reflect the pet in the cabin. Delta says the problem was her dog barked.
She was asked to leave the aircraft. She showed her pet in cabin receipt – but wasn’t allowed back on, she says, because the little dog barked during the interaction. And she’d made the classic error of putting her medications in her checked baggage. Normally there are two kinds of baggage – carry on and lost – but in this case the checked bags were simply on the aircraft, while the passenger was not.
Reason 1. We have no record of the dog.2. When we produced the receipt they said it barked.( no complaints from passengers- they were horrified about treatment) @Delta pic.twitter.com/7WWEoJjThN
— Rosann Jones (@RosannJones) June 29, 2022
Delta explains that the removal for barking was at the pilot’s request.
This was the response from @Delta pic.twitter.com/eglrhcV5ZD
— Rosann Jones (@RosannJones) June 29, 2022
Based on the twitter profile of the woman traveling with the 89 year old, it appears they were flying to Greenville-Spartanburg 153 miles away. Delta offers 7 peak daily mainline departures, and was willing to place them on a later flight. However the passengers report not being able to wait.
This is after an emergency room visit today due to lack of medication that was in luggage unable to retrieve. pic.twitter.com/sJsDUZf9J4
— Rosann Jones (@RosannJones) June 29, 2022
The good news, I suppose, is that heading into the busy holiday travel weekend this woman would probably have been stranded anyway since she was flying Delta – which is offering a travel waiver even without bad weather. They’ve told flyers that anyone not wishing to run the gauntlet of trying to fly amidst the chaos and hobbled operations can reschedule their flights. But if they can’t manage to do it self-serve on the internet, they’ll need to call, and of course Delta doesn’t answer the phone.
