Southwest Airlines has just made a long-awaited change and looks like the end of an era

This is a story about Southwest Airlines catching up with its competitors.

Quick context: just a few years ago, one of the biggest challenges for Southwest and other airlines was the proliferation of passengers who insisted on bringing emotional support animals on board.

Airlines had little choice in the matter. Federal rules allowed people to be accompanied by service animals on planes, but they did not really define “service animals”.

The result? Passengers brought “comfort turkeys, possum gliders known as sugar gliders, snakes, spiders and more” on board as their emotional support animals, according to an industry report.

This, in turn, has led to a “wave” of “barking, biting, pinching, snarling and fighting” incidents in passenger cabins, according to the same report.

Last week, however, Southwest Airlines took a big step in banning most so-called emotional support animals from their cabins.

“As of March 1, 2021,” Southwest said in a statement, “the airline will only accept service dogs trained for travel and will no longer transport emotional support animals,” adding:

With this review, Southwest Airlines will only allow individually trained guide dogs to work or perform tasks for the benefit of a qualified individual with a disability to travel with the Customer.

The types of disabilities include physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual or other mental disabilities and only dogs will be accepted (including those for psychiatric service) – no other species will be accepted as a trained service animal.

Now, it is clear that Southwest is not on its own with this new policy. As I wrote earlier, American, Delta and United Airlines, along with smaller airlines, changed their rules earlier this month.

At that time, Southwest told me that it had no changes to announce. At least one report suggested that some travelers hoped that Southwest, “known for its independent spirit, would not participate” in the ban. Unfortunately, they have now reached out to others.

It all comes in response to the U.S. government’s review of its own rules in December, establishing a definition for service animals, allowing airlines to demand proof that they are really trained and giving airlines the option to classify support animals. emotional like pets.

Of course, some people legitimately need real service animals. They are still allowed.

But this rule change should make life easier for flight attendants, who have had to deal with animals – including situations where passengers and flight attendants have been bitten or injured in any way by them. (Examples: On here, here is On here.)

Now, I know that all of this seems to have occurred five crises ago, so to speak. It’s a hell of a time to be in the civil aviation industry now.

Just last week, we had many other developments: the CDC requiring all airline passengers (and people on other forms of public transport) to wear masks, for example, which should remove some burdens from the shoulders of flight attendants.

Add to that the gigantic losses that most airlines recently reported (Southwest had its first annual loss in almost 50 years), the debate about blocking intermediate seats and, as Southwest President Tom Nealon said, the outlook on one “ goat rodeo “if the government requires airlines to test passengers to Covid before domestic flights.

All of this makes it a little better to get to the end (apparently) of the emotional support animal’s story.

One more point: I don’t know if there was ever a real impact on the financial results of airlines because of this problem. The passengers who were going to fly may have complained, but it was not as if they could go to another airline that had stricter rules; they all had to follow federal law.

But here the airlines were able to work together, ultimately, for the benefit of employees who did not want to have to police this issue among all their other responsibilities. It took years to resolve, and if you’re a business leader in any industry, I think it’s worth taking the lesson seriously.