Emotional support

One of those "Only in America" stories surfaced this week in the Washington Post.. Guide dogs - yes, they're trained (and they're "service" animals). But neurotic Americans (is there any other kind?) demand that they be allowed to be accompanied by "emotional support" animals on planes. This week a woman demanded she be allowed to board a Frontier Airlines with her squirrel. She was denied boarding. Earlier this month, Frontier announced a new policy on emotional-support and trained service animals that is set to go into effect Nov. 1. It allows cats and dogs as emotional-support animals and restricts trained service animals to cats, dogs and miniature horses. Imagine the crap in the aisles

maybe they had to implement tha new rule as when the woman initially turned up she had a sore throat and they could barely hear her and so someone in their communications department sent a memo upstairs to inform their rule makers that they must now allow customers onboard who may look ill and in need of emotional support and also those that are a little horse ? :)

Frequent, you are my spirit animal!

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Originally Posted by frequent

This week a woman demanded she be allowed to board a Frontier Airlines with her squirrel. She was denied boarding.

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according to the Washington Post the squirrel was not noticed till she was actually seated on the plane and when requested by cabin staff she refused to get off. The rest of the passengers were taken off the plane so officials could remove her and the squirrel. She was later shown being wheeled through the airport with the squirrel looking very supportive in a cage on her lap!

Just to make an obviously dull story interesting the Post couldn't resist a "fun fact":

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Originally Posted by Washington Post

Frontier Airlines features a variety of animals on the tails of its planes — including “Foxy the Red Fox,” “Rudy the Raccoon,” “Jim Bob the Badger” and even “Sammy the Squirrel.” Sammy is featured on an Airbus A320-214; Flight 1612 was an Airbus A321 and, thus, would not have had the squirrel tail.

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who said quality reporting was dead in the USA

bkkguy

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Originally Posted by bkkguy

according to the Washington Post the squirrel was not noticed till she was actually seated on the plane and when requested by cabin staff she refused to get off. The rest of the passengers were taken off the plane so officials could remove her and the squirrel. She was later shown being wheeled through the airport with the squirrel looking very supportive in the cage

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That means she must have had the squirrel hidden in a bag, she sneaked it on a plane lol. Only in America!

I'm now considering a racoon as my emotional support and companion animal. I wonder how staff of Etihad will react, when I let my support racoon out of the bag in mid flight. Hopefully some passenger has a dog on board, maybe one of those grasshopper like tiny dogs, fashionable Russian chicks often carry those around in their hand bags.
Dogs and racoons make great friends! Will be fun flight!

policy regarding the miniature horse..aka pony...was put in place for me...obviously