[nagdu] Service Dog's 'evacuation' forces emergency landing of US Airways flight to PHL

[Steven Johnson via nagdu]

A great example of how we are all so uniquely different and will react to
situations in different ways.  It's unfortunate that some believe that
everyone should have tolerated this in the same way...shame on you.

Steve


-----Original Message-----
From: nagdu [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Ginger Kutsch via
nagdu
Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2014 5:54 AM
To: NAGDU Mailing List, the National Association of Guide Dog Users
Subject: [nagdu] Service Dog's 'evacuation' forces emergency landing of US
Airways flight to PHL

Dog's 'evacuation' forces emergency landing of US Airways flight to PHL

By Sam  Wood

Friday, May 30, 2014, 

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/Dogs_distress_forces_emergency_landing_of_
US_Airways_flight_to_PHL.html?withgh

 

Airline passengers often grumble about leg room and the quality of airplane
food.

 

There's a new complaint being aired by a few hundred souls who boarded a
flight Wednesday from Los Angeles to Philadelphia: Not enough
pooper-scoopers.

 

A Philadelphia-bound US Airways flight, already two-hours delayed, was
forced to make an emergency landing in Missouri after a passenger's service
dog defecated in the aisle.

 

"It was the worst smelling blowout I've ever smelled," passenger Steve
McCall told Inside Edition. "It wasn't little pieces, it was full-fledged
dog diarrhea."

 

The crew was able to clean up the dog's mess. But then the situation took a
turn for the worse.

 

The dog pooped again.

 

The stench wafting through the cabin made several passengers sick.

 

"The second time after the dog pooped they ran out of paper towels, they
didn't have anything else," said McCall. "The pilot comes on the radio,
'Hey, we have a situation in the back, we're going to have to emergency
land.' " 

 

Outraged passengers documented the incident on Twitter and other social
media platforms.

 

"People started dry-heaving, a couple of people threw up," McCall said. "The
first time was bad, the second time people said 'You got to get us out of
here! This is nasty.' "  

 

The plane was diverted to Kansas City. A cleaning crew scoured the aisle.
The voyage resumed.

 

"You just had to laugh," McCall said. "It was so outrageous and out of
control. It was a story you couldn't make up."

 

Service dogs are "usually excellent flyers," said Bill McGlashen, spokesman
for US Airways. "They know how to behave and sit in the right area. And this
is just one of the those incidents when the dog became ill."

 

Folks who rely on service dogs every day say the incident may be much ado
about nothing. 

 

"I'm sure this would not be a news story if a human had been sick on a
plane," said Jim Kutsch, president and CEO at The Seeing Eye in Morristown,
N.J. and a Seeing Eye dog user since 1970. "Dogs are living beings and they,
too, get sick."

 

Dogs routinely spend many hours without needing to relieve themselves, he
said. Travelers with service dogs usually adjust the feeding schedules of
their animals to accommodate a long flight. 

 

"Seeing Eye has been around since 1929, and if this is the first time that a
story like this gets this much attention, it obviously doesn't happen very
often."

 

 

_______________________________________________
nagdu mailing list
nagdu at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nagdu_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for nagdu:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nagdu_nfbnet.org/blinddog3%40charter.net