Alaska Airlines becomes the first to ban animals with emotional support and will only allow service dogs

In two weeks, no porpoises, miniature horses or peacocks will be welcome aboard Alaska Airlines flights, amid a busy battle against animals with emotional support.

The airline carrier in Seattle on Tuesday announced changes to its service animal policy, saying that from January 11, the airline will not allow any emotional support animals on its flights.

“Alaska will only transport service dogs, which are specially trained to perform tasks for the benefit of a qualified person with a disability,” the airline said in a press release.

The move comes weeks after the U.S. Department of Transportation said airline is no longer required to make the same accommodation for emotionally supportive animals as for service dogs.

“This regulatory change is welcome news as it will help us reduce disruptions on board as we continue to accommodate our guests traveling with qualified service animals,” said Ray Prentice, Director of Customer Service at Alaska Airlines.

Under the revised policy, Alaska does not accept more than two service dogs per guest in the cabin. Passengers will be required to complete a form on the airline’s website to confirm that their pet is a legal service dog, specially trained and vaccinated and that it will behave appropriately during the flight.

Passengers who have booked their flights before 11 January may travel with their animals with emotional support until 28 February, but not later.

The DOT’s new rule to stop emotionally supportive animals, announced on December 2, aims to end years of tension between airlines and passengers who bring their pets on board for free by saying they need them for emotional help. According to a long-standing departmental policy, all the passengers were a remark from a health worker.

Airlines argued that passengers were abusing the situation to bring a menace of animals on board, including cats, turtles, porpoises, kangaroos, pandas, and in one case a peacock named Dexter.

The agency said it was rewriting the rules, in part because passengers with unusual animals on board “weakened public confidence in legal service animals”.

It also cites the increasing frequency of people ‘fraudulently portraying their fraudulent animals as service animals’, and an increase in emotional misconduct by animals that support emotionally, ranging from fluff on the mat to biting other passengers and flight attendants.

The revised policy will force passengers with support animals to go into the cargo hold – and pay a pet fee – or leave them at home. The agency estimates that airlines, hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, will earn up to $ 59.6 million a year in pet fees.

The number of animals on airplanes increased a few years ago, and a cottage industry grew to provide papers, doctor’s letters, and even dog jackets for support animals.

According to the final rule of the DOT, which comes into force in early January, a service animal is a dog trained to help a person with a physical or psychiatric disability. Advocates for veterans and others have insisted on the inclusion of psychiatric service dogs.

Airlines for America, a trading group for the largest U.S. transportation companies, said the new rule would protect airline passengers and employees while helping people travel with trained service dogs.

“The days of Noah’s ark in the air will hopefully come to an end,” Sara Nelson, president of the Flight Attendants Association, told USA Today.

Proponents of emotional support animals are excited about the new DOT rule and argue that the animals help them with anxiety, post-traumatic or other problems that may prevent them from traveling.

‘While it is no secret that we still live far from a truly accessible transport system in this country, the DOT rule will only exacerbate the existing inequalities for people with disabilities participating in air travel and instead almost exclusively the interests of the airline. industry, ‘said Curt Decker, executive director of the National Disability Rights Network, in a statement, The New York Times reported.

Define a service animal as a dog that is individually trained to perform work or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability;