Airline deregulation and the tragedies of pet travel

Maybe you know about the beautiful 10-month-old French bulldog locked in an airless luggage compartment on a United Airlines flight between Houston and New York.

Possibly you know that the sweet little dog — its name was Kokito and it was beloved by its family — was found dead upon arrival after barking helplessly for two hours before gradually smothering in a compartment where there is almost no air flow.

Perhaps you will be consoled, though, because you also know that United Airlines took “full responsibility” for the little dog’s demise.

Putting the dog in the overhead compartment was “against the rules” and “against the values” of the airline, a United statement said. And the generous airline compensated the family for their flights and for the $125 charge for bringing a pet on board.

In 2017, United Airlines had the highest number of animal deaths of any U.S. carrier.

The Department of Transportation reports 24 animal deaths, 18 of those on United, while six died on the 16 other carriers.

During the same week Kokito died, United just happened to ship a German shepherd to Japan instead of Kansas City, and the owner became nearly hysterical when a Great Dane, who at least survived, emerged from the shepherd’s crate.

Kokito was in the correct proscribed carrying case, and his owner had paid the correct amount for a “pet aboard.” But the flight attendant demanded that the dog be put in the overhead bin and not under the seat, the correct place for pets.

“It’s a dog, it’s a dog, he can’t breathe up there,” the owner’s 11-year-old daughter complained, according to CBS News, “and (the flight attendant) said, ‘It doesn’t matter, it still goes up there.’”

During the 3 ½-hour trip, Kokito barked and cried, but because of turbulence and because his owner, Catalina Robledo, also had a baby in her lap, she was unable to go to him — and she might have assumed that United Airlines knew what it was doing.

When she found Kokito dead at the flight’s end, Ms. Robledo sat on the floor of the plane and sobbed, “Kokito, Kokito, wake up!”

Bloomberg News reported that United CEO Oscar Munoz apologized by complaining that United had “such definitive, specific, concrete, rigid rules that (employees) are not allowed to show a little caring and compassion.”

But this is balderdash, and meant disgustingly to mislead.

In Kokito’s case, it is clear the attendant was going against the airline’s rules by NOT putting the dog under the passenger seat. She was showing too much of only one thing — a lack of caring and compassion.

It has been all too clear since the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 that the values United Airlines (as well as many of the others) holds dear are making mountains of money, incredibly high salaries for their officers and profits for their shareholders.

Before deregulation, we had what was popularly known as the “Golden Age” of airline travel. Airlines were regulated by the Civil Aeronautics Board and it was that federal regulation that ensured fair competition and thus good service.

There’s a moral and a maxim here: Competition also means civility, and you have to regulate in order to have decent competition.

Don’t bother with those absurd, self-serving “apologies.” Instead, let’s re-regulate the airlines, as is occasionally talked about, and make flying at least a survivable experience.

If anyone thought Kokito’s death was “unlike” the airlines, they could not have been more wrong.

It is not that United treats people like dogs, it is that United treats dogs just like it treats people.