A Southwest passenger was removed from a flight due to her need to pet her puppy to keep it from crying.
The passenger's story now has 1.1 million views on TikTok. According to the video, Sara Price posted about a woman who was flying with an 8-week-old puppy who needed to be consoled. Because she had to open the carrier to pet the crying dog, the carrier was not considered to be secured, which is a Southwest requirement.
According to Southwest’s pet policy, “pets must be secured in the pet carrier at all times while in the gate area, during boarding/deplaning, and for the entire flight. If you don’t follow this requirement, your pet may be denied transportation.”
Flabbergasted at the seemingly contradictory instructions, the bewildered owner said that she was just trying to calm her pet and thought she could wait until everyone boarded.
She and her husband were ejected from the flight. The trio had to catch a United Airlines flight to California instead.
"Our Employees are trained to ensure customers are following protocol, and in this situation and after the customer repeatedly refused to comply with our crew’s instructions," a Southwest Airlines representative said.
You can read the story in great detail here
A fellow passenger wrote on Tiktok:
Met this lady in the boarding line today @Southwest Airlines She flew out to Colorado Springs to pick up her new little puppy and fly her back home to CA. The puppy was whining a little and the flight attendant boarding everyone walked up to her and said, if your dogs doesn't be quiet, you may not be able to fly. She sticks her hand in the soft carrier and pets the puppy. It stopped whining. We board the plane and she has the carrier in her lap still petting the puppy when the same flight attendant came up and said the carrier needed to be zipped completely and put under the seat. Everyone around us was like, what's going on here!? Another flight attendant, dressed as a cat comes up and says "are we going to have a problem here!?" The lady does as she is told and we start to taxi to the runway. The dog gave a very soft whine, so she leaned over and started petting it from the outside of the carrier but right at mesh. All the attendants got in a group at the front of the plane and decided we needed to return to the gate and that she should be removed from the flight