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Usually airline passengers side with flight attendants when it comes to safety, but in the case of a US Airways flight Wednesday night, passengers rallied around a blind man and his guide dog and disembarked en masse.
i'm so happy the other pax stood up for this guy. they all deserve a standing ovation. as for the FA, fire the assmunch.
oh, and i'm dying to know how placing the dog under a seat is going to help, sorta like "stowing your luggage under the seat in front of you is going to stop it from flying around.
sorta like "stowing your luggage under the seat in front of you is going to stop it from flying around.
It is, mostly.
The space under the seats is constrained in 5 of the 6 directions (top, bottom, both sides and front), leaving the back side as the only one where something can be inserted or removed (or fly off).
--- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
--- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---
Having just heard of an interesting situation that developed around here not long ago, there is quite a good reason to have guide dog in a position that it won't get thrown around the cabin, both for its own health and that of the people near. Its a horrible thought that an assistance dog can become airborne and bounce around a cabin in severe turbulence. I am slightly surprised the airline doesn't have a 'standard' position to put a passenger with an assistance dog though.
Flight attendant states dog is not in a suitable location, and asks a passenger to have the dog placed in a certain location, passenger doesn't comply and dog returns to original position. The flight attendant cannot allow a takeoff under those conditions.
You would imagine there were far better ways for the situation to be handled, however at its core, I cannot blame the F/A for insisting on the dog returning to the original approved position. The way it was done, however, could be a different story.
.......Flight attendant states dog is not in a suitable location, and asks a passenger to have the dog placed in a certain location, passenger doesn't comply ......
Incorrect. Read the report again. It was agreed that the dog could lay under the seat of the passenger to his left. The passenger therefore DID comply. After a two hour delay the dog fidgeted and moved to lay under the owners seat.....EXACTLY what it has been trained to do in order to do its job. Now, unfortunately the naughty doggie didnt pay attention in school and failed to learn English so it didn't know why it had to be under another persons seat. If the FA had done her job she would not have wound the blind passenger up to the point that he became so frustrated that he used bad language on her. A simple "sorry, your dog has moved" (during a 2 hour Tarmac delay !! They're lucky the dog didnt take a leak or curl one out on the floor !!) would have fixed the problem.
Airlines specifically state that guide dogs can travel with their owners so the airlines should make SPECIFIC arrangements for guide dogs. Well done to the other passengers for taking their stand. The blind passenger should sue for everything he can get, not to mention the other passengers who found themselves morally forced into taking the action that they did and therefore not being able to continue their journeys. Any half decent lawyer will chew US Airways up for breakfast on this one. The sympathy backlash in the media won't help them a lot either.
If it 'ain't broken........ Don't try to mend it !
and another thing, exactly how is one supposed to fit a full grown labrador retriever under the seat in a dash-8 without causing the dog some pretty severe stress?
Having just heard of an interesting situation that developed around here not long ago, there is quite a good reason to have guide dog in a position that it won't get thrown around the cabin, both for its own health and that of the people near. Its a horrible thought that an assistance dog can become airborne and bounce around a cabin in severe turbulence.
So dogs aren't allowed to be in a let's say "unsecured" position. Babies, on the other hand...
--- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
--- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---
So it's a smaller friggen plane designed to be crammed full of self loading freight and go kind of fast and offer the lowest fare on the internet, and a bunch of semi strict safety stuff.
So, I'm guessing the engineers didn't factor in what to do with 100-lb dog.
I dunno...do they have to offer passage to every imaginable twist of disabled person...
(We had this discussion recently, didn't we Tee Vee....the ADA requires them to offer a certain level of service).
Ugh...ok, do they have to offer whatever the passenger needs whenever the passenger wants it-or is the airline due some time to do some work to address the passengers special needs...and should the passenger pay for it? Ok, you need a service dog...OK, you gotta pay for TWO seats.
And to Tee Vee's enthusiastic bashing of the airline in this case- I do default to the term systematic screwing, where the whole system is so engineered to be cheap and effecient that the organization looses sight of "traditional customer service" and reasonable common sense behavior.
As to Gabriels comment on babies...statistics can be a terrible thing. If you gotta pay for a seat and straps for your kid you'll drive, so the kid is better off IN THE LONG RUN riding unrestrained in your lap...
The only question is the risk of kids flying around versus dogs flying around in the event of a severe, but somewhat survivable crash.
Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.
Incorrect. Read the report again. It was agreed that the dog could lay under the seat of the passenger to his left. The passenger therefore DID comply. After a two hour delay the dog fidgeted and moved to lay under the owners seat.....EXACTLY what it has been trained to do in order to do its job. Now, unfortunately the naughty doggie didnt pay attention in school and failed to learn English so it didn't know why it had to be under another persons seat.
That is why it is the owner's responsibility to make sure the dog stays there, or returns there! It is a perfectly reasonable request by the flight attendant to have the dog remain in one position. All the service dogs I have dealt with have always stayed exactly where they have been put. They are absolutely amazing animals.
If the FA had done her job she would not have wound the blind passenger up to the point that he became so frustrated that he used bad language on her
I am very, very hesitant to believe this from one article. I have, unfortunately, been involved in situations where it becomes evident that you can have self righteous arrogant assholes from both the able bodied and disabled camps. Just because someone is travelling with an assistance dog does not mean that they behave in a suitable manner, nor that they do not try and "crusade". We have all seen a passenger go out of their way to "make a point" and cause problems... disabled passengers sometimes do the same thing. I am not saying this is what has happened here, but we really cannot know from the article.
right. and they are really gonna get screwed cuz their own published policy does NOT require the animal to be under a seat.
"There is no limit to the number and type of service animals as long as they fit on your lap or in front of your seat. Aisles may not be obstructed."
The place the dog ended up did not comply with this policy at all. It was not on his lap, and it could not be in front of his seat because that would obstruct the aisle, and access to it for other passengers.
I am not saying it was well handled. There seems an obvious solution - ensure the passenger is given row 1 window. Even move the passengers to allow this to occur. It certainly sounds like poor management of the situation by the F/A, and the airline. However, at the core of it, the dog was in an unsuitable position as per their policy, and the passenger did not ensure the dog remained there. She has every right to expect him to replace the dog. I will almost guarantee you the passenger is not blameless in this scenario, like is being portrayed.
So dogs aren't allowed to be in a let's say "unsecured" position. Babies, on the other hand...
No, dogs do travel unsecured. They just have to be in a location that doesn't obstruct access to an aisle. But I'm not sure that, as an owner, I'd really want that! I'd be trying to find a position that ensured minimal movement if that is at all possible. Babies are restrained for takeoff and landing. The scenario I am talking about was one where all passengers and crew (and babies) were strapped in, but the dog, which was really unable to be secured, ended up hitting the roof of the aircraft.
No, dogs do travel unsecured. They just have to be in a location that doesn't obstruct access to an aisle. But I'm not sure that, as an owner, I'd really want that! I'd be trying to find a position that ensured minimal movement if that is at all possible. Babies are restrained for takeoff and landing. The scenario I am talking about was one where all passengers and crew (and babies) were strapped in, but the dog, which was really unable to be secured, ended up hitting the roof of the aircraft.
I don't know what you mean that babies are restrained for takeoff and landing.
Loop belts are directly discouraged by the FAA (and for a good reason). And I have never heard that you should place your baby under the seat in front of you or on the floor in front of your seat under your legs.
--- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
--- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---
Interesting that the FAA don't suggest loop belts. We do use loop belts when required.
In fact, it's not that the FAA doesn't suggest the use of loop belts. The FAA suggests NOT to use the loop belts. They made a research that involved some crash tests and found that, during a crash, there is a scissors motion where the legs go up and the torso goes down. If there is a baby in the middle, you have baby puree. They concluded that babies are better of flying trough the cabin than in a loop belt.
IIRC, what the FAA recommends (when there is no seat + baby restrain available) is simply that the baby is kept on the lap along the flight. If an emergency landing is foreseen, the the options are to put the baby on a seat with the seatbelt and a pillow (the seat belts are not designed to hold babies) or on the floor, in the space between the seat and your legs, and that the adult assumes the brace position and holds the baby on the floor.
Now, let's face it, all of these options are pretty bad. Just some are worse than others.
Car seats are an option.
Car seats are THE BEST option by far. The NTSB recommended a lot of times to prohibit that any human being flights unrestrained. It was in the top-ten safety recommendations for years. The logic is clear: Everybody has the same right to be protected, but even more those who can give their consent. An adult is not allowed to decide if they want to fly without a seatbelt, but then a baby is forced to do it.
The FAA rejected it. They agree that it's a risk that a baby flies unrestrained, but they say that the parents are free (and encouraged) to buy an additional seat for the babies and bring a car seat, and that by enforcing paid seat would make more parents decide to drive rather then fly, and that would increase the overall baby death toll.
The NTSB rated the response as closed - unacceptable action.
--- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
--- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---
The place the dog ended up did not comply with this policy at all. It was not on his lap, and it could not be in front of his seat because that would obstruct the aisle, and access to it for other passengers.
ummm the aisle is the open space that runs fore and aft. seats are in rows. read the words. the FA was dead wrong. us air is gonna lose this one. i guarantee it.
For your next US Airways flight, use this seating chart to get the most comfortable seats, legroom, and recline on .
--- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
--- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---
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