New airline guidelines outline only dogs as assistance animals
Dec. 2 (UPI) — The Trump administration on Wednesday issued a ultimate rule declaring only dogs can be described as services animals when it will come to travel on airline flights.
The Department of Transportation rule, which comes after a number of months of general public suggestions, also states that emotional guidance animals will no extended be considered provider animals. Airlines will be required to permit psychiatric assistance animals, however.
“The division received far more than 15,000 remarks on the notice of proposed rulemaking,” the division said in a assertion. “The last rule declared now addresses problems lifted by people today with disabilities, airlines, flight attendants, airports, other aviation transportation stakeholders, and other members of the general public, pertaining to company animals on aircraft.
The new policies really don’t call for airlines to ban non-canine support animals, but does grant them the potential to do so — limiting service animals to these that complete specified tasks to reward a particular person with a disability.
The new principles also:
— Enable airways to have to have forms attesting to a service animal’s great actions and health.
— Let airways to need travellers to submit the sort up to 48 hrs ahead of their flight.
— Let airlines to restrict the selection of support animals for each passenger to two.
— Enable airways to limit the size of a service animal to a passenger’s foot area.
— Make it possible for airlines to have to have all service animals to be harnessed or leashed at all times in the airport or on the aircraft.
— Prohibit airways from refusing a company animal based solely on breed.
Previously this 12 months, U.S. airlines expressed assistance for the Trump administration’s proposed policies, declaring the steps would slice down on disputes with passengers making an attempt to deliver all fashion of animals on board — including monkeys, rabbits, snakes, and even miniature horses and peacocks.
American Airlines claimed flight attendants have dealt with problematic pets — these types of as untrained assistance dogs relieving on their own in the passenger cabin and exhibiting indications of hostility under the nerve-racking circumstances of crowded flights.
“My greatest worry as a cabin crew member is that an untrained ESA will ‘snap’ in flight and have an altercation with the one particular or more animals that are in the cabin,” just one attendant wrote in opinions supporting the proposed rule changes. “I have found animals react negatively to each and every other for the duration of boarding and proceed to growl throughout the flight at a person an additional on extra than a person celebration.”
Don Jacobson contributed to this report.