Portly porky put on plane
According to the FAA, the pig was registered as a “therapeutic companion pet” for its owner, who suffered from a heart condition and claimed to need the pig to relieve stress. Airline regulations permit “therapeutic companion pets” and don’t rule out the possibility that the pet is made of the “other white meat.” Personally, sitting on an airplane for six hours with a 300-pound pig wouldn’t be a stress reliever for me. Unless, perhaps, the pig was a masseuse or at least a good conversationalist.
The pig-owner reported her pet weighed 13 pounds when she made the reservation. (Seems the pig gained 287 pounds between then and the time the flight took off.) Airline employees in Philadelphia, where the flight originated, let the weight discrepancy slide. These are the same employees who will reject your bag if it is two ounces over the 12-pound maximum weight limit. The live pig gets a clear pass. A bag made of pigskin would have been tossed.
The shuttle bus to terminal B leaves in ten minutes
When I call my kids to dinner the first time, they know there will be subsequent calls and they don’t need to rush. However, if they arrive at the table after my final call, I simply tell them that they have missed their meal and they will have to wait three hours for the next one, which will be served in terminal B.
As stringent as the airlines are with their rules and regulations, I was pleased to discover that they can be as quirky and inconsistent with their regulations as I am with mine.
Last October, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigated the flight of a 300-pound Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, with the pink bow in its tail, on US Airways. The FAA concluded that the airline acted “reasonably” when it allowed the pig to fly. Not even I have ever acted that reasonably.
What’s that smell in the shuttle van?
But, not all passengers had their stress relieved by having a swine aboard. The 300-pound pig, whose name is being withheld to protect its identity, slept for most of the six-hour flight from Philadelphia to Seattle. But, an airline report stated, “As the Boeing 757 landed with 200 passengers, the pig awoke, tried to barge into the cockpit and stormed into the galley.” According to the Philadelphia Daily News, “Witnesses reported it squealed wildly and left steamy droppings on the airport carpet and inside an airport shuttle van.” That’s when the incident escalated to a new level of severity. The FAA strictly prohibits leaving steamy pig droppings unattended in an airport shuttle van. Several terrorist groups tried to take credit for the droppings.
What was the pig owner’s response to all of this? The same one my kids give when they’ve broken a rule. She denied any involvement. In fact, even with 200 witnesses, the pig’s owner denied that her porky pet ran around the aircraft willy nilly.
While speaking to a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News, the owner shouted, “My pig did not run around the plane's aisles. My pig did not run around anywhere. Print that in the Daily News.” They did, which is why I can reprint it here.
The same airlines that has 12 pages of regulations describing the penalties for giving an extra bag of snack mix to a passenger, provides no rule for curbing a disruptive pig. The kicker was that the pig was allowed into first-class for free. I bet they didn’t even check to see if it had enough frequent flyer miles for the upgrade.
I’ve always said I wouldn’t relax any of the 672 rules for my kids until pigs fly. I guess it’s time to make a few changes.
(You may visit Tim's Web site at homepages.udayton.edu/~bete.)
