ASFlyer wrote:My second point is why would you just stand there and video the incident. Refuse to comply. Let the FA get the Captain or the agents involved. As long as you aren't creating a scene or being disrespectful, it's near impossible that anyone would agree that an animal should be put into an overhead bin.
In the current environment ANY deviation from absolute compliance can lead to incarceration or a beating. This was a mother traveling with two children. It's not cheap to have three tickets. She knew she was risking something like a thousand dollars in airfare if she refused, or perhaps risking incarceration.
You might think that animals don't belong in a passenger cabin and we can disagree because humans are animals and humans occupy aircraft cabins. The fact is that humans, babies, and animals all need to travel sometimes. In an era when airplanes are literally the only option for long-distance travel, saying "no animals on planes" is not realistic.
The F/A should face criminal animal cruelty charges. That poor dog was probably crushed between bags. If not, there may have been inadequate airflow.
But there's a bigger problem. United seems to have a cultural problem in which its employees feel that UA is too big to fail and they cannot be fired. The airline and every single employee needs to understand that there is a risk that they could lose their jobs. Int he present situation, that cannot happen. It's time for government to act to ensure that airlines *can* fail, that their employees *will* face repercussions for criminal acts (and this was one), that airlines *will* be held accountable to the contracts they make with their customers, and that their customers have rights.
A living, breathing, feeling being died on a United Airlines flight because one of United's crewmembers was cold, heartless, and uncaring. Something needs to change.