Air travel is one of the most regulated industries in the world. Yet somehow, nobody thought to ban emotional-support hedgehogs and spiders.
So the airlines are policing themselves. In a triumph of common sense, which can seem rare nowadays, American Airlines on Monday followed the lead of rivals Delta, United, and Alaska and imposed new limits on emotional-support animals. The move follows years of increasingly bizarre incidents in which passengers turned planes into airborne Noah’s Arks and tried to bring aboard animals including pot-bellied pigs, hamsters, and peacocks—to say nothing of untrained dogs, which occasionally relieved themselves or bit other passengers.
The trend even spurred a cottage industry of internet hucksters who create official-looking doctors’ letters attesting to the need for passengers’ therapy pets—for a fee, of course. Actual medical proof attesting to the benefits of emotional-support animals is scant. As one expert in animal-assisted therapy told a publication of the American Psychological Association: “Some people are misusing this so they can have their pets with them.”
No longer. American’s new rules ban
Good. The rules also beef up the documentation required for emotional support animals. And they rightly draw a distinction between such animals and service animals, which are trained animals that help people with documented medical disabilities such as blindness and epilepsy.
In earlier years, common courtesy to one’s fellow passengers kept most animals off planes. People anxious about flying found other ways to cope besides dragging their furry, scaly, or feathered loved ones along. Today, rules are sadly necessary because personal embarrassment is no longer doing the job.
There are lots of things that are maddening about airlines, from inconsistent fares to hidden fees to cramped coach seats. And they still allow common household pets on board for a fee, typically upwards of $100 each way. But now, having your flight disrupted by a wayward snake or ferret seems no longer a possibility.
What took so long?
