This "emotional support" animal bullshit needs to end.

Delta imposes new rules for service dogs after "serious incidents"

Soon Delta Air Lines will require additional documentation for passengers taking service animals with them on flights. This comes amid an increase of incidents involving animals, including a dog attack last year.

Starting March 1, customers will have to show proof of health or vaccinations for their animals 48 hours in advance. In addition, owners of emotional-support animals will need to sign a statement confirming their animal can behave. However, the new requirements don't apply to pets that stay in kennels during flights.

Delta's new rules are aimed at two different types of animals. The first are service animals, which receive specific training to help blind or disabled passengers. Then there are emotional-support animals, which require no training at all. Both fly for free and are not required to be caged during the flight.

Federal regulators have interpreted a 1986 access-to-travel law to allow support animals in airplane cabins and in apartment buildings that do not allow pets. But some people use untrained pets in order to get them on a plane for free, especially since it's easy to go online to buy vests or ID card with a "service animal" insignia.

Delta said the idea behind the new regulations is to keep trained service animals and emotional-support animals safe from aggressive ones. Overall, the airline says it carries 700 service or support animals every day. But people have tried to fly with everything from turkeys, to snakes, spiders and even gliding possums, which are also known as sugar gliders.

Since 2016, the company reported an 86-percent increase in 'animal incidents', that include animals urinating, biting or showing acts of aggression. Last June, a 70-pound dog flying as a support animal bit another passenger several times in the face on a Delta plane in Atlanta. The victim was hospitalized.

According to CBS News correspondent Don Dahler, Tom Panek, CEO of Guiding Eyes for the Blind, was on a Delta flight recently, made miserable by a misbehaving support dog.

"For two and a half hours, passengers had to tolerate this dog while it was barking, lunging and disrupting the flight," Panek said. "No one wanted to confront this individual and say that that dog is not appropriate as an emotional support dog."

It might seem like a harmless way to travel with your pet, but Panek says there are serious repercussions.

"It profoundly affects us because the next time that we go into a restaurant, they may tell me, 'no, you don't have access here', and I wouldn't be able to take three steps without Gus."

Nineteen states have laws against calling untrained dogs, service dogs. Arizona is considering legislation to become the twentieth.

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I am so happy about this news.

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I’m a dog guy, but I travel pretty much every week and there’s no way all these dogs are legit. No way.

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Yeah, service dogs are extremely well-behaved. They have to be. Your Pomeranian is not a service dog, gtfo.

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pretty much this, a trained service dog will never cause a problem because it has been properly trained to behave a certain way. Some asshole bringing their pet onto the flight is asking for trouble as that dog has probably received no training other than being housebroken.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

There really aren't many ways getting your animal abroad though. Do you trust United's PetSafe thing? I don't. I wouldn't be comfortable leaving my dog alone with a US airline unsupervised. Really any airline, but especially the US carriers. So what can you do? A kennel in the cabin on a handful of modified aircraft that specialize and charge a premium for it would be nice.

If you're staying on the same continent the answer is easy: drive. No sympathy for those people. But if you're going to Europe, Asia or even Hawaii that's not an option. The Queen Mary 2 has a kennel, but that takes a week so you better have all the time in the world.

There's no good way to do it. This is the airlines fault for killing pets like it was their job and basically being shitty about things.

Stop treating your fucking dog like it is family and board the damn thing.

Ok yea the point is they have no other choice you fucking idiot.

You expect people moving across continents to just leave their animals behind? That's bad. Reevaluate yourself.

oh yeah https://youtu.be/RljdyXeft04

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I'd rather have an animal next to me than most passengers, unless the dog is barking..what's the problem?

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312 strikes again

Take your knee savers and $500 carry on suitcase and shove it up your ass.

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It amazes me how unhinged and irrational some pet owners get over this. Then seem to equate some people's distaste for others ' animals with a kind of inhumanity.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Part of vacation for me is getting away from my animals. Now, if I can get some time away from the animals that are my actual children that’s even better.

I like my dogs. I don’t expect others too. I even get the stress relief aspect of these pseudo service dogs but train the things. Part of this is probably my disdain of little dogs. I blame my friend’s little shitty toy poodle (only dog who ever clamped down on a bite with me) and my calculus teacher who would like to point out that the only thing a toy dog was good for was being cat food. Ah Fletch. I could of sworn he was 75 24 years ago, turns out he’s not there yet.

Pearl-clutching disdain for being in the mere presence of others' animals is pretty ridiculous and sad.

So it's ok to be a snowflake who irrationally has to have their animal with them to maintain their sanity on a plane, but not ok to not want to be stuck next to an animal for hours after paying hundreds of dollars for an hours long flight in a cramped space?

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

WHAT ARE THEIR OTHER OPTIONS?

If its a flight originating and terminating in the same continent where land transport is possible then fine. I get it. You give away the "convenience" of air travel (which isn't as great as you think) if you want to bring you pet. Drive or get a sleeper berth on a train. Problem solved.

But if you're crossing an ocean you're fucked. There is one remaining ocean liner in service, other than that its all air travel between continents. You really want people to sweat out the whole plane ride knowing that their pet is being thrown around by baggage handlers, stuffed into a cold cargo hold and not checked on at all throughout the flight? No, because at that point you are putting your comfort above the life of a living thing. It really looks bad to stick with this take here. Says a lot about your character.

Just sit in your seat like a good little burrito and it'll all be over before you know it. The dog doesn't like being on the plane any more than you do.

If your outrage is the [GASP!] dared presence of a housebroken species other than your own, you're being ridiculous. If the animal is interfering with you, that's something else, bearing in mind of course that the animal's presence itself is very likely not an interference or nuisance.

Also I think people are tripping over the fact that this "problem" isn't born solely from airlines inability to make and enforce seemingly arbitrary rules. They live for that shit.

This entire kerfluffle is caused by corporations pissing their pants at the thought of being sued under the ADA, an incredibly powerful sometimes regressive force. Hell, it got shoved up the PGA's ads without a second thought.

Wow, just wow

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

I like dogs, I like cats, I like animals in general. But hearing someone's lapdog yapping in a plane for three hours is no fun and adds unnecessary stress to flying. It's bad enough to have crying babies, we can't have a whole menagerie in every plane.

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Its also the airlines fault for marching thousands of pets to their graves, so now people are (rightfully) petrified of letting their animals out of their sight when flying.

Find me one alternative to flying. Assume I cant take the Queen Mary 2.

Our Special Rec co-op does work with veterans with service animals and those dogs are the bomb. The vets also know their dogs back and forth, which makes sense since it costs like $25k to train them, but I'm pretty sure they're probably comparable to a comfort sugar glider.

Find a nice pet sitter. I imagine that the dog is bothered by you dragging it on a plane and forcing it to stay in the same spot for hours around a bunch of smelly strangers. Babies make noise but they usually aren't trying to harm anyone. Considering that a paid passenger was attacked last year and put in the hospital this is the right change in policy.

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GO BEARS!!!

It seems to me that the same people who "have" to have their pet on the plane with them are many of the ones who want their animal in a restaurant with them or roaming off leash in public and expect others to make concessions or else...hysterics. See America above.

And for the record, I really like trained animals.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Again, RR wants people moving overseas to euthanize or give up their pets because it's too much of an inconvenience for him to be on the same aircraft as an animal. That's reasonable.

We're not talking about overseas flights. I think anyone flying over an ocean would understand the pet has a good reason to be there. But your basic JFK-Lauderdale flight where someone's "support cat" wiggled out of someone's arms and is running around the cabin? Keep your cat in the carrier!

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If it isn't a well trained service animal, put it in cargo with the other pets. It's isn't other people's fault that (the generic) you are mentally shaky and/or a bad pet owner. Nor are you particularly special.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.