Airline passengers for years have faced a choice when traveling with pets.
Pay a pet in cabin fee for small dog or cat. And on top of the fee, the pet goes underneath the seat in front of you, and counts as your full-sized carry-on bag. You can only bring an additional personal item.
Or just pretend to have an emotional support animal. It’s free. You can still bring your carry-on bag. It can even be a horse, and it doesn’t have to stay in a bag underneath your seat.
Before the pandemic, the FAA worked with airlines on new regulations that helped them crack down on the Noah’s Ark approach to domestic pet travel. Ostensibly passengers are now limited to real service animals. In practice, though, you just have to fill out paperwork in advance and say you have a service animal.
That step alone cracks down on some of the abuse. People who were bringing turkeys onto planes aren’t also the people who tend to file paperwork in advance. However there’s still a disconnect.
So here are some standards you can use to tell if the animal a passenger is bringing on board is a real service animal – or if the passenger is just circumventing the rules.
They’re being fed treats, and not just mealsTheir owner speaks to them in baby talkThe animals rest on pillowsAnd there are two animals per passengerIf the animal is part of a photo shoot in the aircraft window
Service animals aren’t ‘pets for someone with emotional challenges’ they are trained working animals. If any of these five items are present in the cabin, then you aren’t looking at a real service dog.