>From:    Chere McCoy <[log in to unmask]>
>This says it all -- even included address' where you can make you wish's
>regarding critter travel known!!  Heck they want let animals in the cabins
>(some of them) now not even in CARGO?  Lets push for the cabins!  Suggest
>you send a not to each one requesting Ferrets be allowed to travel with
>their owners IN THE PLANE.
 
As much as I'm dissatisfied with airline service in general, I don't think
the airlines are really to blame on this one.  FAA regulations limit the
number of pets that can travel in the cabin, allegedly to prevent alergic
reactions in the confined and recirculated air inside the plane.  My
recommendation would be to cc: any letters you send to the airline straight
to the FAA as well, asking them to change this policy; establish a number
of pet-free fly days, so the alergy sufferers will actually be safe, and
open it up more on other days.  In the recirculated air of a plane, one
dog or cat is more than enough to endanger everyone with a severe alergy,
so the policy is pointless from a technical standpoint anyway.
 
As to why they won't let pets in cargo, I think I have to agree with them.
I wouldn't inflict an airline cargo hold on any pet I loved or even didn't
actively dislike.  Or most I did dislike.  I can't think of any animal I
hated enough to endanger like that.  The airline baggage system is designed
to handle clothing and mail, not living things.  Animals can die from
exposure to hot (sitting on the tarmac in the sun waiting to get loaded
into the plane) or cold (at the altitudes airliners fly, it's about -40 F
in the summer); can get loose when shifting baggage or overworked and/or
careless baggage handlers wind up breaking their carriers and be killed by
the various dangerous parts and substances inside a plane; or can be simply
misplaced like any other piece of luggage.  Waiting a day or two for a
suitcase I can stomach; waiting a day or two for a starving pet, though...
 
And of course, security regulations that wouldn't even stop a functionally
brain-dead terrorist from blowing up a plane pretty much prevent passengers
from loading and unloading their own pets into a secure, heated area of the
cargo hold where they actually would be safe, even if the airlines could be
sweet-talked into adding such an area to their planes.
 
Untill the FAA (and society in general) comes to realize that pets are not
luggage, but family members entitled to the same treatment as any other
passenger, I'd sooner take an extra week or two off and drive anywhere I
had to go than put my pets on a plane.  If I couldn't do that, I'd make
arrangements to have them watched by someone I trusted until I could get
back, or just skip the trip and enjoy my time with my pets instead.
 
Eric A. Schwartz
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[Posted in FML issue 3137]