We know that more dogs die United Airlines than any other U.S. airline. But there’s more to the story. United is pushing back.
The stats are alarming. 506,994 animals flew on a U.S. airline last year. 24 died. 18 of those deaths came on United Airlines. That’s 75% of animal deaths!
But there’s more to the story.
In a fairly extensive Washington Post story, United (sort of) defends why it kills more dogs: United accepts higher-risk dog breeds and transports more animals than any other U.S. airline.
These types of dogs are known as brachycephalic, or “short-nosed” or “snub-nosed,” breeds. Their airways are more compact, which tends to lead to respiratory issues. The short-nosed breeds include bulldogs, boxers, pugs, Boston terriers, Pekingese, mastiffs, shih tzus and others.
For years, American and Delta have refused to ship these types of dogs, arguing that the risk of death or injury (and liability to the airline) was too high.
United claims it is performing a public service in transporting dogs that no one else does. It points to 3,000 military families that rely on United alone to transport their pets each year.
That’s why a United spokesman said–
Our goal is to help keep families together, and dogs are part of the family. A lot of times, families just don’t have an option.
If we track dog deaths from 2015-2017, 85 died. Nearly 40% of those deaths occurred a dog in the high-risk breed category (banned on American or Delta).
United is currently considering whether to continue accepting these pets (new bookings for its PetSafe program are currently unavailable), but has taken other steps to prevent dog deaths. These include much more scrupulous checks of animals (to ensure they do not go to the wrong destinations) and a requirement that ramp supervisors cross-check every animals boarded onto a United plane.
CONCLUSION
While there may be no excuse for the death of dogs, these two stats at least put United’s dog deaths in greater perspective.
We’ll see if United opts to continue to accept these dogs or adopts a more restrictive policy similar to American and Delta.
A real picture would come from continuing the math exercise to see how many deaths per animal emplacement by each carrier. Perhaps, it might show that UAL is the most careful of them; with the lousy-est PR people.
you need to control for everything when comparing numbers. Are the dogs the same? are the trips the same? more international? longer duration? more stopovers on United? Even price charged per trip may carry a significant bias in terms of United intake of dogs and their origin. I’m pretty sure there are significant differences between the dogs UA carries vs. some of the other carriers. Just saying United is responsible for 75% of all dog deaths vastly simplify the situation.
I’d argue that it’s just as irresponsible to continue to accept those breeds as it is to provide poor transport safety overall, which they clearly do/did. AA and DL likely stopped transporting those breeds because they wanted to limit their liability. And, as a consequence, they’ve probably lowered significantly the number of pet deaths occurring on their watch. United can spin the PR wheel any way they want and claim they’re “keeping families together”, but I call shenanigans for a couple of reasons:
1. AA and DL stopped accepting those breeds because it was dangerous to do so – thus limiting their liability. I think UA just jumped at the opportunity to be the semi-sole transport option for a subset of travelers. This was a money grab gamble that likely paid off for a long time but has now come back to bite them.
2. Many military families relocate overseas via “The Patriot Express”/”Rotator”, the chartered flights organized and operated by Air Mobility Command. Pets are allowed both in-cabin and in the hold on these flights. So United is absolutely not the only source of pet transport for military families, and to claim so is both patently false and disingenuous. http://www.spacea.net/images/pebrochure-new.pdf
They seem to need a backhoe to keep digging themselves deeper into this PR hole.
Good response from UA. I still think they should ban all dogs. Responsible pet owners (who, for instance, don’t leave their pets in the overhead bin for the entire flight or, for instance, don’t also travel with a teenager and baby…) should be made to suffer by not having their dogs along with them. It would cast attention on the real problem: irresponsible and entitled pet owners.