A bizarre event unfolded on a Frontier Airlines flight recently that centered on a hidden dog. On a crowded aircraft, a flight attendant announced that someone had smuggled a dog onboard, and then asked the entire cabin to help identify the culprit.
Frontier Tells Passengers To “Snitch On Your Neighbor” To Find Hidden Dog During Boarding
According to reports and social media posts, the flight attendant said aloud that a dog was onboard and would not depart until it was found, imploring other passengers to speak up if they knew who was responsible. Passengers looked around, whispered among themselves, and searched for a canine interloper as boarding stalled. Ordinary travelers suddenly found themselves cast in the role of deputized investigators rather than guests awaiting departure.
Her exact words:
“So someone in here has a dog aboard. Listen folks, we are not leaving until we find…what we’re looking for…If you think it’s your neighbor…Go ahead and snitch on them.”
And here’s the video (which popped into my Twitter feed several times over the last two days…):
Some folks have wondered how a “hidden” animal could get past security, but the Transportation Security Administration’s procedures make it clear that pets, including dogs, are allowed through checkpoints so long as they are under the owner’s control and the pet carrier itself is screened. Proper documentation and payment for an animal to be in the cabin, however, are separate airline requirements, so there is no conflict here.
What This Says About Animals On Planes
I have written before about the nonsense that arises when passengers blithely treat animals as service animals for convenience rather than need. Fake service animals have become rampant, with many travelers claiming their pet is trained to avoid fees or cabin restrictions. The result is chaos: oversized animals in cabins, anxiety among other passengers, reluctant crews trying to enforce ambiguous rules, and now, apparently, entire flights turned into reluctant sleuthing expeditions.
Airlines should enforce clear standards for animals in the cabin, period. If someone wants to travel with a pet, there should be a fee and a clear, enforceable process. Dog barks? Ejection. Dog jumps up on someone? Ejection. If an animal qualifies as a legitimate service animal with recognized training and documentation, that’s one thing. But the current process of self-certification has led directly to the problems we see today.
That’s a more general observation, because it seems the problem here is that a dog was snuck on the airplane, likely to avoid the in-cabin pet fee, which suggests the owner was not clever enough simply to claim it was a service animal…
There’s another issue in this particular case. As View From The Wing points out, “Snitching on your neighbor isn’t the best way to handle any of this. It’s a recipe for harassment and conflict.” He suggests an announcement like “If you have an animal not yet verified with the gate, press your call button now so we can resolve it quickly,” which does strike me as a better approach.
CONCLUSION
In this case, it is not clear if the dog was ever found or whether the owner finally admitted it.
I like a more subtle approach, but I’m not sure that asking your neighbor to snitch on you was the worst way to handle this if there was a desire to get the flight out on time. Certainly that would have created hostility between the dog owner and the person who ratted the owner out, but my guess is that the dog owner would have stepped off the flight before paying Frontier’s $99 cabin pet fee, which likely was much more than the cost of the ticket itself…
We gonna digress into religion and politics like when Gary posted on this over at VFTW, or just focus on the misbehavior and ‘snitches get stitches’ angle?
I didn’t read the comments on VFTW. How did this go into religion and politics?
See for yourself:
https://viewfromthewing.com/frontier-locks-down-boarding-telling-passengers-to-snitch-on-your-neighbor-until-hidden-dog-is-found/
I would gladly be the snitch.
I hate to say it, but snitching “neighbors” is the best worst solution. Your solution of self-reporting obviously won’t work; if they were going to do that, they would have paid the fee/done the paperwork already. And a loose animal in the cabin can cause annoyance at best, and injury at worst.
As someone close to a vet, I will say that this causes massive problems when things get out of hand. I absolutely advocate for pets in the cabin instead of the hold, as the disaster stories have shown what happens when leaving a pet in the cold, dark, cramped space below a plane. But there are incredibly legitimate reasons for all the paperwork and fees (to cover handling the paperwork/discourage unnecessary pet travel) because animals can spread diseases to pristine areas, or injure people or other pets..
Lots of inaccurate inform here. I travel with a service dog everywhere. She is registered with the DOT and has an ID number, and there’s a 24 hour number where any airline can call into to verify that she is a legitimate service dog. Most of my seatmates on aircraft do not know she is even there, because she shares the seat with me, and I don’t advertise the fact that I’m traveling with a dog. Without being too specific, her official job is to wake me up from sleep if she senses something (physical) is happening with me. I’m personally surprised at how many airline personal feel free to demand why I have a service dog, despite the fact that I have to remind them that there are Hippa rules that protect me from their inquiries. I’m pointing this out too explain that sometimes a dog may not have the appearance of being a service dog in your eyes, but that doesn’t make them any less important to their owners.
What part of HIPAA indicates that airlines are covered entities?
Here is what HIPAA actually says
It says MEDICAL PROVIDERS cannot share your medical information without your consent. It says nothing about anyone else asking about your medical information.
This is a common misunderstanding
You are absolutely correct Derek. And those who toss “buh buh buh HIPAA!” around are full of feces. Especially when they misspell the acronym.
As someone tasked with initially implementing it back in the ’90s, I LOVE to correct them because they remind me of fake service animal people. 😉
Wrong. ADA regulations under the Department of Justice specifically allow doing what task a service animal is expected to perform.
Secondly, there is no DOT phone number for airlines to confirm that an animal is registered as a service animal. The closest thing is the general Air Travel (Disabilities): 1-800-778-4838 DOT Air Consumer Hotline which is targeted to travelers. And the reason for this OSS that there is no federal registry for service animals.
You clearly are one of those people faking your way through because you don’t know even the basics about service animals. Here’s hoping that someone’s miniature horse deposits toas apples at your feet as a reminder.
It is quite unfortunate that this happens to you. But, the problem lies with the scum that tries to pass off a pet as a service animal to to save money and/or avoid enclosures.
This makes me very uncomfortable. On the one hand, I certainly understand the flight crew’s dilemma and understand that they need to resolve the situation quickly. On the other hand, encouraging any populace to “snitch” on each other and turn each other in is so very scary and a very slippery slope. Especially with everyone throwing around words like Nazi, Gestapo, and Dictator due to different political viewpoints or policies … in the UK folks are being encouraged to turn each other in for social media posts that don’t fit certain narratives even though no one is being threatened, and no violence is being espoused or foreshadowed, just a difference of opinion. They are even flirting with the idea of thought crimes. In the U.S.A people during COVID were encouraged to snitch on their neighbors for all sorts of stuff, and in some cases not related to any pandemic Authority figures and local and federal Governments are encouraging spying, snitching and similar behaviors for anything they don’t agree with on both the left and the right. If you agree with the side that is encouraging it, you justify it to yourself, if you don’t you scream and blow-up social media about it. But then the worm turns, and suddenly when it’s an issue or a topic you don’t agree with, OMG Democracy itself is at stake!! They holler the sky is falling so much these days … no one pays attention and we are all exhausted. I guess I see it like freedom of speech. I don’t believe that is only for people or issues I agree with. Even if I actually detest something someone is saying, I will still defend that they have the right to say it. That said I also believe in consequences for your actions and personal accountability so just because you have the freedom to say something, doesn’t mean you should … but that is a personal decision, and I am not here to police that for anyone except myself. Lastly I will say I think it is supper scary when as a culture we are fine with changing our values or principals depending on which side you are on, or whose saying or doing whatever. To me that is very hypocritical. You believe in certain ideals or you don’t. And you defend them, or you don’t. But what is even more scary is when there is so much noise and hostility and violence that we ALL either stop caring, or are too scared too stand up for what we believe.