Her first airplane trip in six years did not go as planned after Maria Fraterrigo was told by Frontier Airlines that she could return to New York City, but not her emotional support parrot, despite having no issues on the outbound flight with her pet bird.
Frontier Airlines Is For The Birds: Budget Carrier Backs Down, Lets Emotional Support Parrot Fly Home to NYC
For years, Fraterrigo and her husband made an annual pilgrimage to Puerto Rico to visit friends and family. In 2019, she lost her husband and has not traveled since then, but her son talked into her into it.
So this year, 81-year-old Fraterrigo flew to San Juan (SJU) with her African gray parrot, Plucky, on her shoulder.
Her son Robert had used the online chat feature to confirm with Frontier Airlines the bird would be allowed onboard. A chat transcript revealed that an agent had said there would be on trouble traveling with her emotional support bird as long as he brought a doctor’s note (“Okay that’s awesome. That is all she needs to bring and show to the airport.”)
On January 4, Fraterrigo and Plucky flew to San Juan with no issues.
But three months later, the return did not go quite so smoothly.
As Robert shares, “They started yelling and screaming at my mom and saying, ‘You’re not getting on board with the bird. You want to get on the plane, leave the bird behind.’”
That’s actually what she should have been told from the start. Frontier stopped transporting “emotional support animals” in 2020 and has a clear exclusion for parrots on its website:
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A few things to know about traveling with pets in the cabin:
- Domesticated dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, or small household birds may be carried on flights within the United States.
- The following species are never accepted: Large birds (e.g. parrots, macaws, cockatoos, birds of prey), rodents (including mice, rats, squirrels), beavers, ferrets, reptiles (including snakes), amphibians, spiders, and insects (and please, no lions, tigers, or bears).
With Frontier seemingly refusing to budge, Robert looked into private jet options:
“It’s an island — can’t go drive there and pick her up. There was no boats that were going to take her back. None of the major airlines would take her back. Our last resort was a private jet, and that’s not cheap. That’s not cheap at all. And my mom was not leaving the island without that bird.”
But after intense media pressure and direct intervention from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D – NY) this week, Frontier relented and allowed Fraterrigo to return home with Plucky. That strikes me as reasonable, but only because it transported Plucky on the outbound journey.
CONCLUSION
One of my real viral stories on Live and Let’s Fly was a story about an emotional support peacock…while airlines are no longer compelled to require emotional support animals onboard, Frontier allowed Plucky onboard for the outbound journey and it strikes me as reasonable that Plucky be allowed back.
As for the general madness over emotional support birds on airplanes…well, we have bigger birds to pluck these days.
Start spreading the plumes news, we’re leaving today…
emotional support parrot? are we serious? plucky the parrot? like c’mon now.
these people need to just admit this is a scam.
Cheers to you, Frontier. We need to stop allowing and enabling this rank stupidity. Can I bring an emotional support hooker if she sits on my face…I mean lap the whole flight? I will get a note if need be.
We don’t always see eye-to-eye on dogs on planes, but I’ll give you this one. A parrot is just a bridge too far.
This is an elderly woman. Why she decided to vacation with an expensive parrot. ( on Frontier) I can’t understand. But they got her there and it’s only fair to return both pet and passenger home. Doubt this will start a trend. Good luck to Plucks.
This whole “emotional support pet” has gotten totally out of hand. If you’re that emotionally unstable stay home. It’s to the point that people were taking their “emotional support pet” into our grocery stores and putting them in the cart where the next unsuspecting Customer would put their groceries. :/
This happened to me about 2 weeks ago. Judy a pit bull with cropped ears wearing a service vest jumped into my cart full of groceries. Gross. This was the second time it happened with this dog. I love dogs but I was unhappy. Owner dude thinks it’s cute and judy is just ” friendly”.
Gross. At some stage these people should be put down. Like the parrot.
People can be emotionally attached to their parrots. But please do this at home.
Interesting. I thought the comments in this blog were required to meet standards of respectfulness and courtesy. But this group of persons can hardly be said to have made constructive — or respectful — comments to the third largest group of companion pet owners in the world.
Yes, you read correctly. These insults (including “emercycrite” suggesting murder is appropriate) are directed at the third largest group of real companion pet owners in the USA/world (excluding fish/hamsters who are, admittedly larger in numbers). There are literally millions of us in the United States.
Many notable people in the past and today had (and have) parrots as companions: Queen Victoria and King George V had parrots they were fond of. So does Steven Spielberg. So did Andrew Jackson. So does Mickey Rourke.
Intelligent and prominent people across time are drawn to the intelligence, personality, and emotional depth of parrots, which possibly explains, conversely, why the comments here reflect such profound and childish (“put down”? really?) ignorance of what is really happening in the truly stressful blog story here.
So, literally millions (over six million) of us have small, well-behaved, quiet pets that can easily travel in an airline-approved carrying case under the seat in front of us, and pay the fee . . . exactly the same as a chihuahua or a Siamese. It’s exactly the same concept.
You say birds carry diseases? Have you ever heard of toxoplasmosis, the deadly disease carried by cats in their feces and transmitted through the air? Not to mention: leptospirosis, campylobacter, ringworm, salmonella, MRSA also carried by dogs. A parrot in a carrier in an airplane cabin poses near-zero risk, and does not carry the rare diseases that chickens carry (and even then, only in crowded, badly sanitized conditions).
You say birds cause allergies? Really? Are you telling me people are not allergic to cats? Or to dogs? How come pet dogs and cats do get to come in the cabin, but reasonably-sized birds that fit in carriers can’t?
You say birds make noise? Have you ever heard an unhappy dog or cat howl/bark/yowl through a flight? The right to fly needs to be conditionally granted just like it does to people. If your pet gets a bad track record, she/he gets on a no-fly list. Period. But it should be for just cause. Not just because it was a bird.
Great danes should not fly in cabin. Same concept for birds. Nobody is proposing the ridiculous: A peacock (who ruined it for everyone) was NEVER an appropriate subject for in-cabin travel. But an African Grey, who can fit in an airline-approved carrier under the seat during take-off and landing should never be unjustly excluded automatically . . . if a dog or a cat of appropriate size is allowed, please explain why a companion bird isn’t.
Put yourself in our shoes: The luggage compartment is a terrifying environment that should only be reserved for animal travel/transport as a last resort. Would you want **your** beloved Rover or Mittens forced into that cargo hold for no good reason, traumatized, even though it was well-behaved, fit in a carrier, and caused no problems? If it needed to travel for specialized surgery that was now going to be complicated by the cargo-trauma, how would that make you feel?