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An Airline Can’t Make You Kill Your Dog
Yesterday, the story of a French bulldog dying aboard a United Airlines flight flooded social media. An idiot flight attendant “forced” the family to put the dog in the overhead bin, and the entire flight listened to the dog suffocating in the bin until, upon landing, discovered it had died over the course of the flight.
After the incident, United said they would take “full responsibility” for the death of the puppy. Make no mistake, the flight attendant (and the others on board as well) should all be fired; their lapse in judgment makes you wonder just how competent they are in other areas of their job. But is United really fully responsible for this death? A fellow passenger wrote:
“They INSISTED that the puppy be locked up for three hours without any kind of airflow,” another Flight 1284 passenger, June Lara, wrote in a Facebook post early Tuesday. “They assured the safety of the family’s pet so wearily, the mother agreed.”
“This little guy fought hard for his life, filling our flight with his cries until he finally ran out of breath,” Lara wrote in his post. “United Airlines does not care about the safety of their furry travelers. This poor family paid $125 for their pet to be murdered in front of them. There is no excuse for the pain this family is suffering.”
I’m never one to blame the victim when tragedy strikes, but it’s ridiculous to assert that the family watched “their pet murdered in front of them.” This woman put her dog into the overhead bin and listened to him suffocate; as did everyone in the immediate vicinity. There were any number of steps this family could have and should have taken: ask to speak to the head flight attendant, ask to speak to the pilot, call United Airlines from their seat, Google the regulations for flying with pets in the main cabin, or simply, refuse to comply and deplane.
Flying with kids is stressful, flying is stressful, that we all know. But ultimately, nobody can force you to kill your own dog. United deserves the latest PR disaster at their feet, but our society should also acknowledge the importance of not blindly listening to authority. The story is reminiscent of the Milgram Experiment at Yale, one of the most famous psychology studies in history.
One of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology was carried out by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University. He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience.
The procedure was that the participant was paired with another person and they drew lots to find out who would be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher.’ The draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher, and the learner was one of Milgram’s confederates (pretending to be a real participant).
The learner (a confederate called Mr. Wallace) was taken into a room and had electrodes attached to his arms, and the teacher and researcher went into a room next door that contained an electric shock generator and a row of switches marked from 15 volts (Slight Shock) to 375 volts (Danger: Severe Shock) to 450 volts (XXX).
Milgram (1963) was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person.
Stanley Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities, for example, Germans in WWII.
Stories like these should spark conversations not just about how terrible airlines are, but also about personal responsibility and conscience. Maybe that’s asking too much.
Published in General
Stop right there. Getting your impression about the real world from news reports is a colossal error. Haven’t you heard of Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect?
The TSA people are pretty cool in my experience. It gets a little better every time for whatever reason. It hasn’t gotten worse.
I remember those days when there were great airlines, on which I couldn’t afford to fly. And, back then, the passengers complained just as much.
Actually the big issue reportedly is GPS air traffic control. Better service, lower cost, more dependable, better recovery after storms, less fuel burned. Obama should’ve shoved that down our throats instead of ACA.
The dog struggled and died of asphyxia while no one did nothing? No one even opened the compartment to evaluate things?
What cowards, what fools, what wussies have we become?!!
But it was about different things, like the quality of the food – yes, I’m old enough to remember hot food served in coach on domestic flights.
Why are the airlines allowing animals in the cabin of an airplane? Airlines, grow some balls. People, leave your pets home in the care of a dog sitter. What if a dog starts barking, pooping, peeing? What are the airlines thinking?
By the way, I love my dog but I would never take him on a plane with me.
Regret will haunt them and fellow passengers for the rest of their lives. I define regret as coulda, shoulda, woulda, didn’t.
Most stories scream incomplete knowledge. Or disputed facts. Yet people go on about them anyway. Too much air time to fill/kill.
Once the dog started communicating his discomfort, there was information available to act. Everyone on that plane will have regret for not doing/speaking up when they could. If they had to land, it would have been worth the cost to the airline in public relations. If someone got up and opened the overhead and took the puppy out, it would have broke the rules, but not killed anyone, I’m betting. The other passengers may have been upset, but they wouldn’t be walking around hearing that puppy’s cries in their mind.
It isn’t the inanimate, incorporated airline that can absorb the guilt, but the humans present. If one other person had spoke up, it may have given the owner backbone. And others would have spoken up also. Not one person did, evidently.
Psychologist also tell the Kitty Genovese story, of the young woman stabbed to death, who’s screams were heard, but ignored.
You might want to read the actual story of the Kitty Genovese murder, Ralphie, rather than the NY times propaganda (I believed the myth for years). There is nothing illegal about opening the flight bin after reaching cruising altitude so this story as is sounds suspect. Of course, the poor pooch could have died of fright/trauma distress.
We should leave the dog/human parallels to childless metrosexuals. Sad story. 100,000,000 dogs in America. 30,000 die every day. When mine dies, I cry. When the neighbor’s dies I’m sad. Re the other 29,998 I really don’t give it much thought. Sorry.
Some other numbers to keep in mind (I fly a lot and try to be observant): average passenger space of a 737 is 1,200 square feet. Size of a two-bedroom condo. Into which we are now packing 130 passengers, their computer totes, attaches, diaper bags, guitars, skateboards, carry-ons (larger than 1970s suitcases), dogs, cats, service parakeets, departure balloons and snuggly-wuggly body length pillows (for a midmorning flight, natch).
If we want the flying experience of the 1960s, we’d need to re-establish intact two-parent families with some Judeo-Christian authority structure and broad cultural norms of appropriate adult and child physical and verbal conduct and be willing to pay $650 in 2018 dollars for a NY-Fort Lauderdale roundtrip ticket.
I had heard that, but my psychology teacher taught us that and I took the class a few years ago. Matthew Shepherd’s death was mis reported also. I hesitated adding that, but I do know there have been instances of people passing by or ignoring others in distress.
Well, now we know those overhead bins are airtight — I mean who would have thought.
This is changing. The ADA grifters will be sad. Too bad.
For 12 years I’ve been flying on Alaska Airlines between my two homes, one in Seattle and the other in the Palm Springs area, with two Golden Retrievers and can honestly say the airline has been wonderful about taking care of my precious cargo. They flew (both are now in doggie heaven) in airline approved crates twice a year. The airlines require a health certificate no older than one month and a paid reservation of $125 each animal in the pressurized cargo area of the plane. When I check them in at the airport I am given a ticket that matches one on the dog’s crate. On the dog’s crate is her name, my name, address, phone number, flight number and a destination address, and, for good measure, I always include their vet’s phone number at each end of the flight. I also tape a note to the top of the crate that says, “Please be kind, I’m a white knuckle flyer.” The dogs are last to be loaded on the plane, and a ticket that says, “Suzi is on board” is given to me after she is loaded and just before the airplane closes the door. I always alert the flight attendant when I board that I am waiting for that ticket. Once the plane lands, the dogs come in at a special oversized luggage area near baggage claim. Flying with large dogs is a painaroo, but they were very important members of our family. I see people on the plane who put little dogs under the seat in front of them, and I envy them as I think of mine scared to death down below. There is no way under the sun a flight attendant could get me to put a little dog in the overhead bin. The woman on United spoke no English and was no doubt intimidated by the attendant, who, I hope, has been fired. Furthermore, I cannot, in my wildest dreams understand how the passengers sat there and listened to the cries of that little puppy and didn’t erupt in indignation. I wish I had been near her on that flight, and that little dog would be alive today.
I would like to point out that the great majority of the passengers had no idea that there was a dog in one of the overhead bins and that the sound of a dog freaking out and eventually being quiet is exactly the sort of thing you can expect to hear on a flight, and the sort of thing you learn to ignore.
So I’m going to cut the passengers slack and go with poor communication coupled with improper training for the dog-owner and the flight attendant.
I’ll grant that passengers further away from her probably didn’t hear it, but I firmly believe the people nearby certainly heard it. That dog was scared and fighting for its life. It made lots of noise until it could no longer breathe.
When I go on vacation, our dog goes to the kennel. My wife pays a minor fortune to the kennel for walks, playtime etc. The dog is not afraid or upset when dropped off at the kennel, and seems to like the kennel people. The kennel people talk affectionately to the dog ( not so nice to us, but they are nice to our dog ). I love our dog, but vacation doesn’t include the dog.
Like previous commenters, I have to wonder why they didn’t open the bin periodically during the flight.
In my case, I’m living in two separate homes for six months at the time, so it’s not a vacation. I can leave a dog in a boarding kennel for three weeks tops if going for a “vacation,” but no way could I leave two dogs for six months.
The drive is wearisome, but not impossible.
I hadn’t read that the dog’s distress was audible. I know it’s hard to say if you’re not there, but if it were me I suspect my dog would have been freed, and if it resulted in a physical altercation between me and the flight attendant, so be it. I’d love to see that P O S airline fail and vanish into history.
Horse pucks! You want to endanger my dog then you better be prepared to kill me.
I thought I’d avoided your anti-animal vitriol when I stopped listening to your stupid podcast. Go away.
You learn to sort of brace yourself for the ordeal beforehand, and bring along something anesthetic (movies, podcasts, games, alcohol) to dull the pain of the experience. But yea, it basically sucks.
That describes air travel pre- about 1977 and only the “Jet Set” could afford it. I hear it was nice, but I never set foot on a plane until I was in college as a result. It’s just surprising to me that the unregulated airlines can’t find a class of service somewhere between “cargo” and “Xanadu.”
You are overstating what he meant.
Look at how the service keeps going down and all of the tacky-tac fees. It’s a goofy market.
I’m not sure I see your point. I understand that the airlines are stuck with a lot of customers who think it’s their god-given inalienable right to fly direct from Newark to Cabo for $1.99, and that that isn’t economically viable, at least until they invent a unicorn fart based substitute for jet fuel. So I think QV has correctly identified that problem.
The tacky-tac fees are just a way of putting butts in seats without the sticker shock at the initial purchase stage of the transaction. Once you’ve bought the ticket and shown up at the airport dreaming of that first margarita, what’re you gonna do? Leave you luggage at the curb? So you shell out the additional $25 bucks.
But I still don’t understand what point you’re trying to make. Nor do I understand how more regulation is going to improve the experience of air travel.
I didn’t say “more” and neither did he.
I notice Delta has two classes of seat room now in economy. This is going to get sorted out the hard way.
Yes.
He didn’t use the word “more” but he suggested new regulation which sounds an awful lot like “more.” If QV wants to pipe in an clarify I’ll respond. But I’m not going round any further with you about what he meant. Neither of us knows more about that than what he put on the page and I believe I’m reading it fairly.