That's a lot of emotional support there....:rolleyes:

http://i2.cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/as...e-gallery.jpeg

Emotional support animal are not covered under ADA. Direct your hate somewhere else, please.

Hi Cardiomd,

Are you sure about this? If so, I'd like to encourage my airline to stop allowing emotional support animals for a variety of reasons. I'm sure I can employ some Google-Fu and come up with a more complete legal basis (or lack thereof) for the emotional support animal sham, but if you know the law off the top of your head, it would kickstart my research.

It's my opinion that the emotional support animal situation is completely out of control and hurts and/or inconveniences far more people than it helps. IMHO, if a person is so emotionally unstable so as to require a pet pig as a travel companion to prevent an emotional breakdown over the course of a 3 hour flight, then that person probably shouldn't be locked in an (mostly) airtight tube with 230+/- other passengers for hours on end.

Like so many things that started off well-intentioned, I think the emotional support animal craze has managed to soil the more legitimate laws such as the ADA designed to protect citizens with legitimate special needs.

Lighten up Francis. Just because LNL made an ill-advised statement doesn't mean it's HATE.

This self-righteous social shaming is out of control. If we keep using such extreme language for every situation, words will eventually have no meaning.

Right now you can qualify to have an emotional support animal, on line for 79 bucks. No actual visit to a doctor. Imagine if you really had to see a doctor, pay what that might cost and renew it (with cost) on an annual basis. That would probably weed out a vast majority of the BS. Sad for those who really do need an emotional support animal. One of the last emotional support dogs I had on one of my flights tried to bite one of the FAs.

I want an emotional support Coral Snake who will bite everyone in sight and make me feel better.

Hey. Just 79 bucks on line ;)

Sorry but snakes, ferrets and I believe spiders are not approved ESAs. I'm sure that'll change at some point. :rolleyes:

Probably just need a little surcharge.

I will knit him a turtle neck. They will think that he is a Hollywood producer.

Seriously? Are you gunning for TOTD?

LNL may have misunderstood emotional support vs. guide dog, but her point still stands. If you can't see through someone's mistake and choose to bite their head off with an inane post like the one above, perhaps you're fit for the TOTD nomination.

I said please. Would a smiley face have taken the edge off more?

If someone went on an angry rant about taxes and ended it with, thanks IRS, it is logical to assume she blames the issue and is directing the anger toward the IRS. Regardless of whether the IRS is to blame, or the ADA in this example, being ignorant is not an excuse for blaming an organization or bill who has no role in what is causing your anger. Stop getting offended over two sentences on a message board.

Hello, Pot?

This is Kettle...

I wasn't offended. There was no outrage or pontificating or belaboring on issues. I clarified that the ADA didn't apply and then directed their misguided anger somewhere else. I know, reading is hard for some people.

Dang. This was just starting to get fun.

I'm gonna get an emotional support rhinoceros.

Passage quoted from news article:

“What a wonderful time it is for the scammer, the conniver, and the cheat: the underage drinkers who flash fake I.D.s, the able-bodied adults who drive cars with handicapped license plates, the parents who use a phony address so that their child can attend a more desirable public school, the customers with eleven items who stand in the express lane. The latest group to bend the law is pet owners.

Take a look around. See the St. Bernard slobbering over the shallots at Whole Foods? Isn’t that a Rottweiler sitting third row, mezzanine, at Carnegie Hall? As you will have observed, an increasing number of your neighbors have been keeping company with their pets in human-only establishments, cohabiting with them in animal-unfriendly apartment buildings and dormitories, and taking them (free!) onto airplanes—simply by claiming that the creatures are their licensed companion animals and are necessary to their mental well-being. No government agency keeps track of such figures, but in 2011 the National Service Animal Registry, a commercial enterprise that sells certificates, vests, and badges for helper animals, signed up twenty-four hundred emotional-support animals. Last year, it registered eleven thousand.

What about the mental well-being of everyone else? One person’s emotional support can be another person’s emotional trauma. Last May, for instance, a woman brought her large service dog, Truffles, on a US Airways flight from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. At thirty-five thousand feet, the dog squatted in the aisle and, according to Chris Law, a passenger who tweeted about the incident, “did what dogs do.” After the second, ahem, installment, the crew ran out of detergent and paper towels. “Plane is emergency landing cuz ppl are getting sick,” Law tweeted. “Hazmat team needs to board.” The woman and Truffles disembarked, to applause, in Kansas City, and she offered her inconvenienced fellow-passengers Starbucks gift cards.”

Response from person to reporter who included the above statement in her article:

“Are you going to ruin it for all of us?” one of my dog-fancying friends asked, when I told her that I was writing this article. I was surprised to learn how many of my acquaintances were the owners of so-called emotional-support animals. They defend the practice by saying that they don’t want to leave their pets home alone, or they don’t want to have to hire dog-walkers, or they don’t want their pets to have to ride in a plane’s cargo hold, or that Europeans gladly accept dogs everywhere. They have tricks to throw skeptics off guard. “People can’t ask about my disability,” one friend told me. “But if I feel that I’m in a situation where I might have a struggle being let in somewhere with my dog, then I come up with a disorder that sounds like a nightmare. I like to be creative. I’ll say I lack a crucial neurotransmitter that prevents me from processing anxiety and that, without the dog, I’m likely to black out and urinate.”

The article should be updated to include the poor bastard on Delta who was seated at a window seat bit in the face by the large dog (sitting on his owner's lap in a MIDDLE SEAT!) He suffered serious injuries and the owner's response was he was afraid his dog would be destroyed. Ugh....

Can anyone say, "Out of control?!"
:mad:

I want a support FO, they are so cute with their hats.

I bring my emotional support crocodile on board. The FO don't raise as much of an eyebrow with it as they do my seeing eye dog. :D

I foresee a PIREP cartoon coming on.

Would it be wrong to put a leash on an emotional support Captain? :p

Don't some of you FAs already have a leash on the CA?


:eek: :D:D

For sure....not that there's anything wrong with that! Right?!

:p

Had two emotional support dogs get into a fight in back two weeks. One FA was ready to punt the little one that kept snarling at her during the flight. She had my support 100%. Both dog owners were total azzholes and acted like it was the AIRLINE'S fault for not forcing other pax to move seats. Much faith in humanity was tried and lost that day.

Listen up numbnuts of the world: your dog does NOT need to go to Disney World! A dog does NOT need a vacation! Every day is Saturday when you're a god damn dog! Besides, dogs are too short to go on the rides anyway!

Simple economics and human nature.

A 2 minute internet search shows United wants $250 to ship your dog in a crate in cargo. Delta wants $100 to bring a small dog in the cabin as a carry on or $200 in cargo for larger dogs. In addition, Delta says you may have to drop off/pick up at the cargo facility, not the pax terminal.

Or, for $65 on the internet, you can get a certificate and fashionable "service animal" vest and avoid all the hassle.

Nobody should be surprised.

TOTD in my opinion is a shared prize today. Approaching the gate I was met by one of our flight attendants telling me that the agent cleared another airline's non-reving flight attendant into a seat on our metal while she was still without a seat despite telling the agent she was listed and it is our metal. I explained nicely to the agent that our people go first. End of story, right? 25 mins later, close to push, I notice that the offline flight attendant is in a seat up front and our f.a. is nowhere to be seen. Walked by up the jetbridge again to sort it out for the second time and myself and our f.a. are informed the f.a. jumpseat is available and that's where our f.a. can ride is she'd like to go. Well now it's a become matter of principle and doing the right thing and two people in the wrong ****ing me off. So we pushed minutes later with our f.a. in the back, the clearly in the wrong and knowing it offline f.a. standing angrily at the gate, and a gate agent reminded that we have policies they will follow. Had the agent and the offline f.a. been decent people and handled it better our f.a. would have gladly taken the jumpseat and gotten the other girl on. Unbelievable.

You pushed with the FA jumpseat open and an FA at the gate?

Are you self nominating today?
Why didn't the offline FA take the JS?

Did you even bother to read what I wrote? The offline flight attendant was at the counter the first time I was at the gate while I explained the priority to the agent after our flight attendant approached me to explain that the agent was REFUSING to process her non-rev seat request. She was fully aware one of our flight attendants was listed. She still went down to the plane thinking she was going to ride instead. Are you kidding me? Who does that? Our flight attendant told me after the flight that if the offline f.a. and the agent had simply just asked her politely if she'd take the jumpseat she would have. You appear to be an apologist for bad behavior and poor manners. Not me. The agent and the offine flight attendant worked together to try to force our flight attendant into the jumpseat. They never even asked her if she'd mind riding in it. Can you really not see all that's wrong with that?
You're my third nomination for the day.

Oh by the way, like many here I see you're an internet expert. Did you know that cabin f.a. jumpseating doesn't work like the flight deck? For instance, only our cabin crew and pilots can occupy the f.a.jumpseat.

Good on you. Taking care of your own comes first.

Best course of action would be, the agent asked the company FA nicely if she would mind, if she took the FA Jumpseat so she can get get an offline FA on. There's been many time where an agent asked the company Pilot if they would mind taking a FA Jumpeat so I can take the cockpit JS. Everyone was more than willing when they were asked politely.

Good advice. Try to work out something that solves the conflict, while politely advising the gate agent that we need to look out for each other.

Funny tool-ishness on my last trip...

FA in the back calls me and asks for the seat belt sign on (some "nibbles" of chop, but very, very light), so I promptly turn the sign on. While the sound of the seat belt sign chime is still fading, she launches into a roast. "We can't take the carts out back here! It's too rough to do our service! You need to pay attention!"

So I asked her if she'd contacted the Flight Leader (Lead FA) about the "rough ride" making it unsafe for their service. Her response was....word-for-word, "I can't, she's doing her service up front."

I suppose there's a rational explanation for it, but it struck me as "Tool Level Yellow".

After we land in BOS the FO and I head to the Long hotel pick-up point. Same FA overrides the Flight Leader's directions to our pick-up point, and leads them to the Short pick-up spot, in a galaxy far, far away.

Yup...she's wrong. Our driver tells me we have to wait because he's supposed to carry 5. 15-minutes later they chug up to our van, and the clearly exasperated Flight Leader walks up to me, points to the errant FA and says, "Don't listen to her! She cray."

Tool Level Orange

That tool level yellow wouldn't happen if pilots would stop briefing their FAs that they have control over the seatbelt sign when they want (choppy, need to clear the aisles, etc). There's a reason the seatbelt sign is in the flight deck. Not the forward galley, not the mid galley, not the aft galley. If you as a PIC of a jetliner can't figure out how bumpy/when the seatbelt sign should be on after your umpteeth years of flying, how do you expect a new or 2 yr flight attendant knows it's bad enough the sign should be on?

Lets face it, 90% of the time the FAs want the sign on, it's their way of clearing the aisles and getting people to sit down. If it's a security thing then sure by all means. But the seat belt sign is not a weapon tool to clear aisles, to force people to sit down. I'm just a FO, so I have no say or control over it, but once I'm CA, I know how I'll treat the seat belt sign and it won't be as a weapon for the FAs (unless security situation).

Guys....there are some FAs who use the seat belt sign as an excuse, BUT I'm pretty sure not many of you have the opportunity to go aft and see for yourself how much more turbulent it is back there. When my pilots have that opportunity the comment we hear most is, "Crap, it IS bad back here!" To which I reply, "would we lie to you?!" :)

Too bad you missed the stretch "8".:eek:

A stretched 8? Is that a flight attendant or an airplane? :D

It's a good thing you added the little sarcasm emoji :p

Those would be "38 long's.":D

I agree, hence my immediate response to turn the seat belt sign on.

The logic of the next comment was the TOTD award statement. On an A319, turbulence in the back that would prevent performing the service safely would prevent the FAs in the front from performing same.

Yellow card.

Leading the gang to the wrong pick-up point over the guidance of the Flight Leader led to a delay for us, and aggravation for her fellow FAs.

Orange card.

As far as I'm concerned, there is NEVER a question about the effect of turbulence on the cabin. Any FA on my crew has "Seat Belt Sign On" authority!

^^^

TOTD, the brand x FA that gave our B grief because she couldn't get a "roadie" for the drive home. If you ride for free, a simple thank you will do.