Pet Peaves?

I entered my first class seat of 2B and settled in. With luggage overhead I sat down but, as always, didn’t put on my seat belt. I always take the aisle seat and I knew I had to get up for my window seat mate to arrive. When she did finally arrive, I must admit I was a bit disappointed when I saw she had a small dog in the dog pouch with her.

Now I’m a dog lover, so I have nothing against dogs. I just don’t enjoy flying with them, unless of course they are my own. But even then, I would never travel with the dog. It would just be too stressful for me.

She placed the small dog under the seat in front of her, and then she placed her carry on bag in the shared space between the two of us. Of course, that infringed upon my foot space, but knowing that tolerance is required on airlines, I said nothing.

To my knowledge, dogs are required to stay inside of their pet container the entire time they’re on board, and remain under the seat, however, she opened up the container and allowed her dog outside. Occasionally, even holding the dog on her lap, as she allowed the dog to look out the window. All these things are in clear violation of American Airline pet policy rules, but the flight attendant did nothing to enforce.

I took this one picture of the small dog at her feet. Clearly, the dog is not under the seat, but at least it was in the container during this picture. You can also see her carry-on that she put in the shared space between our seats

Now, I will give credit where credit is due. The dog was well-behaved and never caused a nuisance, which is what I feared the most. I don’t mean for this to sound like a complaint post because it’s not. The dog caused me no distress during the entire flight.

My issue is with the policy itself. What if I had a dog or a cat allergy and I was forced to sit beside somebody bringing the pet in the first class seat beside me? Would I be forced to take another seat somewhere? Also, what if the dog was a nuisance? Now I can understand this more with babies, but with dogs? I think this is more preventable.

I think of hotel policies regarding pets. They have designated rooms for pets and they do a thorough cleaning (supposedly) after the pet people leave. So if somebody with an allergy to pets stay at the hotel, they could just simply avoid these pet rooms. But you don’t have that option on the flight. So my question is, why not?

Why can’t there be pet seats on the plane just like there are pet rooms in a hotel? I would put the pet seats at the very back of the plane because that’s where the fewer people are when the flights are not loaded. Also, they’ll be minimal people walking by the pets.

I’m not anti-pet travel. I won’t get into the whole emotional support pet thing because that’s a big sham in itself. But if there is a legitimate need to travel with your pet, I see no reason why the airline cannot accommodate, but I would think that they would do it with better discretion towards their paying passengers.