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

[Craig Heaps via nagdu]

As a professional journalist for nearly forty years and a guide dog user 
myself, I could not disagree more with those who criticize this as a story.

It is a legitimate news story.  It's an extraordinary event on a form of 
transportation used by millions of people every year in the United States. 
It is the fact that it happens so seldom that makes it news.  It has the 
element of "Can you imagine being in that situation?" that also makes it 
worthy of coverage.  I thought the reporter did an excellent job of putting 
the incident in perspective by including the guy from The Seeing Eye and the 
comments from the airline spokesperson saying it's extremely rare.

I am sympathetic with those passengers who found the smell overwhelming. 
It's not the atmosphere they expected when they paid good money for their 
tickets.

I can understand the defensiveness of some guide dog users who want to lash 
out at the journalistic decision to cover this incident.  But they sound 
like the people I had to deal with every day who didn't want some event or 
another "publicized" (reporters hate that word) and tried to argue it was 
stupid to think it was a legitimate story.  Think about the last time you 
heard the story of some belligerent drunk on a plane who had to be 
restrained with the help of other passengers.  Another disturbing, but rare, 
event.  Was covering that also stupid?

Sorry for the semi rant.

Craig and Chase, who I hope never poops in an airliner