Flying with Fido: Part 2

I had originally written a post about flying with Bentley here. I was very anxious and there was a lot of prep work to be done. I had called the airline multiple times to make sure I had every detail covered and thought we were good to go.

Within 1 minute of stepping up to the counter to check him in, they were telling us he couldn't fly. His crate didn't have screws, so it wasn't safe. Luckily, a manager came over and said it was totally fine and we could just use zip ties. The next hurdle was the temperature at our destination. It was 19 degrees there and the cutoff to fly an animal is 20 degrees. I really had to convince him to let Bentley fly.  The gate guy huffed and puffed the entire time and I swear he was purposely taking his sweet time so we would miss our flight. Luckily we made it just as they were boarding, but not without a few more hurdles at the gate. Thankfully, we made it home safely (it was snowing like crazy when we landed and didn't even know we were near the ground until we touched down!)

The trip home was so much worse. We got to the airport at 4:30am (when it opens) and again, almost didn't make our flight. Once again, with 2 minutes of getting to the gate check, the woman at the desk was saying he couldn't fly. We didn't have a Certificate of Acclimation. This was not even mentioned when we flew home, so I had no idea what they were talking about. Once they realized there was a statement written by the vet saying he "should be fine" they thought that might be sufficient, BUT it didn't say "will be fine." Well duh, no vet is going to state that an animal WILL be fine, its just not reasonable. She had to go check with her supervisor which took a good 30 minutes. Then he didn't have a rabies certificate, but he did have a health certificate that stated he had a rabies shot. Not good enough. Back to the supervisor. The gate agent was also one of the worst customer service reps I have ever encountered. We finally made it through with about 2 minutes to spare and I'm happy that we made it home in one piece.

I have a feeling that the airline we flew with was an isolated experience, but because of it, I will probably never fly with Bentley again. Everyone we encountered was so rude and looked at us like we had 3 heads, like we were the ones who were out of control for wanting to fly with a dog! It is also worth mentioning that my brother works for this airline and he had checked everything to make sure we were all set. He does this every day for a living and couldn't believe all the trouble we had.