AIR-BONE HEADS AT UNITED
Dog forced into bin dies
A dog died aboard a United Airlines flight to New York after a flight attendant forced the pooch into an overhead luggage bin.
Maggie Gremminger, a passenger on Monday’s Flight 1284 from Houston to La Guardia, uploaded a photo of the dog’s distraught owners on Twitter.
“I want to help this woman and her daughter. They lost their dog because of an @united flight attendant. My heart is broken,” the passenger wrote on her caption.
Travel Web site The Points Guy reported that during their flight, an attendant insisted that the woman put her dog — which was in a TSA-approved pet carrier — in an overhead bin for the rest of the journey.
Passengers heard barking during the flight but didn’t learn that the dog had died until the plane had landed.
“There was no sound as we landed and opened his kennel,” passenger June Lara wrote on Facebook.
“There was no movement as his family called his name. I held her baby as the mother attempted to resuscitate their 10-month-old puppy.”
Gremminger’s and Lara’s posts about the ordeal are now going viral on social media. United is facing online backlash.
“Another reason I will never ever fly or support doing business with United Airlines!” one Twitter user wrote.
A United representative admitted to The Points Guy that the flight attendant shouldn’t have put the dog in the overhead bin.
“This was a tragic accident that should never have occurred, as pets should never be placed in the overhead bin,” according to the rep.
“We assume full responsibility for this tragedy and express our deepest condolences to the family and are committed to supporting them. We are thoroughly investigating what occurred to prevent this from ever happening again.”
Onboard pets should always ride under the seat in front of the passenger, according to United’s Web site.
“A pet traveling in cabin must be carried in an approved hard-sided or soft-sided kennel,” the airline says.
“The kennel must fit completely under the seat in front of the customer and remain there at all times.”
The dog’s death is the latest in a string of embarrassing incidents for the airline — which once boasted in its ads of treating passengers to “the friendly skies.”
The airline ordered security guards to forcibly remove Dr. David Dao from a Chicago-to-Louisville, Ky., flight in April 2017.
Images of the bloodied doctor being dragged off the plane became a p.r. nightmare for United.
And a woman who had purchased a ticket for her 2-year-old son was forced by United to give up that seat to a standby passenger from Houston to Boston this past July.