As much as I may personally be opposed to dogs and cats in airplane cabins, I do feel profound sadness for the humans who lost their dog and cat when a Japan Airlines Airbus A350-900 collided with another aircraft at Tokyo Haneda Airport earlier this week.
No Human Victims, But Dog And Cat Perish In Japan Airlines A350 Crash
Although it has been reported that there was no death or serious injury during the evacuation of JL516 on Monday, Japan Airlines has clarified that this assessment is limited to humans onboard. On a flight with 367 passengers, there were bound to be animals and indeed both a cat and dog were traveling in the cargo hold.
Sadly, per JAL, they did not make it and were engulfed in flames moments after the passengers successfully evacuated.
We don’t know the breed of these animals or their stories, but I do know that humans love their pets and so I can indeed, as a former dog owner myself, imagine the profound sense of loss in the passing of this dog and cat. It’s bad enough to lose a beloved pet, but it’s even more difficult to consider what their final moments were like.
And I suppose this is a perfect example of why many passengers insist on their beloved companions traveling in the cabin with them (which is not allowed on JAL domestic flights). At the same time, imagine the horror if dogs or cats in the cabin impeded the safe evacuation of humans and led to death. There is a reason why JAL has opted to forbid pets in cabins. That doesn’t take away the tragedy of these two beloved pets perishing.
Finally, please note that five members of the Japanese Coast Guard died when the JAL A350-900 collided with their smaller aircraft and I do not mean to minimize their passing, lives which are far more valuable than these two animals. They died in service to others (carrying supplies to areas of Japan impacted by the recent 7.5 magnitude earthquake) and I have deep respect for each of these men and for a government and military that seeks to do its duty in protecting citizens.
CONCLUSION
A dog and cat perished in the crash of JL516 in Tokyo earlier this week. They were in the cargo hold. I can only begin to understand what a horrible loss this is for their owners and want to take this moment to say that while there might be great division as to whether pets belong in passenger cabins, there should be unified sadness for the loss of such beloved creatures.
Sad to be sure.
On a different note, are you using Gary’s creepy AI generated art method? I don’t recall you using that before.
No. I don’t care for those. I created this myself taking a stock image of a dog and cat and splicing it with the picture of the JL516 crash using Photoshop. I quite enjoy using Photoshop. I have used AI a couple of times, but don’t like the look…though I’m going to write about “Rina” tomorrow.
This is a very sad piece of news.
My thoughts are first for the families of the deceased. And understanding that the owners of beloved pets are suffering as well, my prayers are for all of those folks as well.
Kids, and specially babies can be way more disruptive and dangerous to bring on a flight than, for example, a small cat in a soft cage.
There are also talk about how people would be willing to pay extra just to be sure they are not near a kid in their flight, but most of the industry seem to don’t really care about these things if we talk about babies, so this really has nothing to do with discomfort for other passengers and actual risk to the flight, but more with the fact that most people like more kids and babies than dogs or cats.
From my point of view, if we really care about these things, both should be prohibited in flights, or if small babies are allowed in flights, so should small pets.
Why would we prohibit babies? If they are crying put on some headphones. Deal with it. Pets can bite, they can cause allergies, they can get in the way when there is an emergency and carry fleas and ticks.