like first class? Sounds like she was running a scam that backfired. Pets are everywhere, and the people who own them are loaded with their dander and hair, there's no escaping it. She'd probably have to live in a bubble if her claim was true..

that even if there weren't any pets on a particular flight, many passengers come loaded with pet hair and dander.

From what I've read, it looks like this person made a poor choice of which battle to fight that day.

but for sure those with severe allergies to animals would at least be all too aware both of the sorts of places they might become ill and that they could google for their problems beforehand. Highly suspicious.

One thing, expecting people in general to always behave sensibly, responsibly, and honorably is for suckers. Bet the airlines could tell ALL kinds of stories.

You pay your money for ticket, get on the plane and THEN tell the airline you have a life threatening allergy?
And demand other passengers leave the plane?

to be fair I had no idea one has to provide a doctor's note to prove a medical problem....so I can understand why she did not have one.

that she had a life-threatening dog allergy -- and they know they can't guarantee that there's no pet hair or dander on any flight.

Trying to use a medical problem to get your way (deserved or not) is gonna get you tossed.

The last thing they want is an in-air medical emergency. Re-routing a flight costs thousands -- gas, landing fees, crews over allowable service time, repositioning aircraft and replacement crews, hotel rooms and vouchers, liability and pissed off passengers.

Someone pulls the old "I can't do XYZ because of my medical conditional" at the gate. (usually sit in seat they don't like).

10 minutes later, two people walk up and tell'm they have to leave the plane. I fly alot and now I cringe when I hear that canard pulled because I know what's coming next.

People get used to using that excuse in other walks of life, but at the gate? It's a one way ticket back to the terminal.

On very long flights, i would have to use it to secure an aisle seat on a very crowded plane, so it facilitated my coming and going to the rest room.

I didn't try to use it for upgrades, and if the flight was scheduled >9.5 hours (which means not the UK) i got to fly Biz Class. So it was only an issue really, when i flew to England or Brazil.

But, the few times i needed to show the letter, the airline was very accommodating.

When I worked in restaurants people would come in all the time talking about their "severe" food allergies and then I'd watch them eat something that had exactly whatever they said would kill them. No tomatoes on my burger - it'll kill me, make my throat swell shut. But they put ketchup all over their fries. Gluten will put me in a coma. But the onion rings that are dipped in flour before the non-gluten-free beer batter and fried in a contaminated deep fryer are OK.

People can be a little...hyperbolic.

so servers who are laughing at their customers' fake allergies won't know what happens when they get home.

I have gluten-sensitive ulcerative colitis, which gives me intestinal bleeding 2 or 3 days later . . . and then all I can do is try to guess where I might have eaten it.

almost certainly contains gluten. The onions are likely not only dipped in flour before being battered - the batter itself almost certainly contains flour.

There are some instances in which it is entirely the restaurant's fault - like when a restaurant we went to labeled their mixed-meat tacos "beef." My daughter has the same reaction to poultry - and knew from the age of 6 or so to ask about any unidentifiable meat unless it was specifically labeled beef, pork, lamb, etc.

But no one who is gluten sensitive/celiac should be eating anything dipped in batter and fried in a multi-use fryer without specifically asking about whether the batter contains flour, or whether the oil is used for anything with a flour batter.

And . . . catsup = tomato is even more obvious.

Now, if they had been feeling all smug about fake allergies when their patrons ate something the restaurant intentionally disguised, you are absolutely correct. My daughter's bleeding/diarrhea/months-long-efforts to regain remission don't show up for several days after the exposure. That's how we discovered the beef=poultry incident. We returned to the restaurant to eat a couple weeks later, I tasted the taco "beef" and recognized that it almost certainly contained poultry (the texture is different), walked back the timing from the end of her remission - which matched perfectly. I demanded to see the product label, and sure enough it contained ground turkey or chicken (by now I don't recall the difference).

eating out is a minefield and I've avoided it since I was diagnosed, many years ago.

The current gluten free fad, whereby people without celiac disease/gluten sensitivity choose to eat gluten free food, but have no repercussions, is a two edged sword, sometime causing skepticism, as voiced above, or even outright subversion of the requester's food.

Initially changed the signs on the meat to taco "meat," - and then within a month they were back to taco "beef."

I wrote to corporate and laid out in gory detail what would happen if someone with a severe peanut-type allergy to poultry ate their taco "beef." Then I laid out in gory detail the increased risk of colon cancer coming out of remission causes for my (then) ~8 year old daughter. The increase in cancer risk they caused her is not as visible as anaphalactic shock, but it is every bit as deadly.

The signs were permanently changed after that letter.

I'd never ask for something breaded, but unfortunately many restaurants will re-use a pan they just used to cook something breaded . . . and there are many, many other ways for food to get contaminated. And if they are sloppy about cooking gluten-free and don't see you get sick in front of them, then they think you're "faking."

Eating out is a challenge.

and maybe I worked at really good places but everywhere I worked in the last 15 years had very strict protocols for when a guest identified as having an allergy to anything. A couple places had waivers if a guest could not be dissuaded from eating something they just told me 10 minutes ago would kill them.

But don't tell me that you have "life threatening" allergies, and then wave me off when I tell you that what you ordered/are eating is chock full of whatever you supposedly have an allergy to. I was very well versed on menu ingredients and preparation techniques for the exact reason of identifying allergy triggers for my guests.

After awhile it gets irritating that the whole kitchen has to go into stage-5 lock down mode cause someone doesn't like something and decided the best way to address it is to claim severe allergies to whatever it is. Or, if someone has that severe of allergies, maybe a server or bartender shouldn't be the one educating them on what they can and can't eat.

And just for clarification...I'm not talking about someone who comes in and says they have an allergy and asks pointed questions about ingredients or preparation. I can tell someone who has real allergies a mile away by what they ask. I'm talking about someone who says, like I said, no tomatoes on their order, and then says they're deathly allergic to tomatoes. Then when they ask for ketchup I'm like...that has tomatoes in it. People'd be like "oh, it's fine".

and ask the waiter to ask the chef what he recommends for a gluten-free person that he would like to make.

I'll eat almost anything if it doesn't have gluten. I've gotten some interesting choices that way, that go beyond the broiled chicken or steak I'd otherwise have ordered.

... when I ask a barbecue establishment if they have *anything* that isn't hickory smoked or using natural hickory flavoring in the sauces. I go to "mustard barbecue" places mostly because the sauces and "liquid smoke" added to more traditional "sweet barbecue" is more likely to give me issues than the meat.

And since I'm usually putting it to the server as "Hey, I know I'm asking the impossible, and I promise it's not going to kill me, but hickory hates me. Do you know if there's anything with a more mesquite smoke base or something? If not, it's okay...." they're usually willing to ask one of the cooks.

Sometimes the hours of gut cramps after is worth it, though, when someone brings in baked beans to the office with that questionable sauce, or they really didn't know and I took the risk anyway because barbecue is just.... so...good!

----

I did have to refuse a job dinner at "Fred's Hickory Inn", though. Only time it's EVER a life-threatening issue is breathing burning hickory wood, and I knew they smoked their meat onsite. As I told my boss, I've already had to use an epi-pen once getting too close to a meat smoking area, and didn't think he wanted an ER trip to ruin the dinner.

I'll just ask if something has fish sauce (usually has shrimp in it), or if they're frying shrimp and French fries in the same oil. I think it's really wrong to claim an allergy that doesn't exist. My intolerance is not life threatening.

Emergency room, oxygen tube, the works. Kitty cats can literally kill me with cuteness.

The first time I ever saw a cat on a plane was just a couple of years ago; I didn't think there was any need to call ahead. It really wasn't an issue, though, because as soon as I noticed the woman in front of me had a cat, I told her very politely that I had a life threatening allergy to cats and then asked nicely if it would be easier for her to move or me.

As long as you're nice about things, 99.9% of people will be nice in return. And as long as you're not petting the cat or so close that the cat's dander is immediately flying up in your face, it shouldn't be that big of a deal. "In the same plane as something" won't trigger an allergic response to anything.

(as this woman apparently did) is entirely different.

there would be other passengers to potentially bother.

Why didn't you just ask the flight attendant to reseat you away from animals?

No assigned seats, and I thought it would be easier and quicker, especially if we moved before the plane was full.

I'm the one allergic to cats, but she's the one bringing cats onto planes.

She didn't seem to mind, but thank you for arguing on her behalf anyway.

easier, given the circumstances you describe, for you to have simply moved to a distant seat?

(And as the FAA explains, every plane is contaminated with pet hair and dander, because passengers with pets at home bring it on their clothes. You could have been sitting in a row where all three passengers had just left cat dander on the seats, and you wouldn't have known it.)

And being a cat are very different things.

is going to get on your clothes and could bother you more than cat dander that's inside a cat carrier in the seat in front of you. With 29% of Americans owning a cat, it's about a 1 in 3 chance that any seat has just been occupied by a cat owner with some cat dander on his or her clothing.

That said, I'm allergic to cats myself and have never brought an animal on a plane.

As many individuals have pointed out, pet dander is everywhere. Yes, the reaction can be more severe when the actual pet is present than merely dander. But if she's walking around in normal society it is not life-threatening.

She asked them to remove the animals, so she could fly. Once she has announced that her allergies were life-threatening (likely using an exaggeration of her actual allergies in an attempt to get her way), Southwest had few options other than to demand medical proof she was safe to fly with the two animals - or remove her.

That said, the officers could have been less brutal. Especially once she indicated she would walk off the plane, they should have permitted her to demonstrate that she would. Continuing to hold her - arms locked across her chest - and yelling at her to walk in that position was both humiliating and a task she was unlikely to perform, which just resulted in more inappropriate use of force.

Many people actually do have life-threatening allergies.

with pet dander and hair.

Also, service animals are required by law to be able to accompany their owners.

If her Allergy was that bad, she would have been reacting before she found out about it. A lot of people have pet dander on them from their pets at home.

"after she stated she had a life-threatening pet allergy when she learned there were animals on board. "

You travel with an epi. And a lot of Benadryl in a container (not the push out of the package kind). I've started just taking one Benadryl before boarding. If I see or hear the cat - I down 7-9 (dangerous but less dangerous than the cat) and keep the Epi ready.

There's not a lot you can do. For service animals I'm aok. That's actually a human being for a human being. For non service um . . . I resent it. I can't even drive myself home from the airport for several hours and have trouble getting my luggage (spacey, out of it, blurred vision) after a short flight with that much Benadryl in me.



*tip toes away*

what about all the pet owners with cat dander and fur on their clothing? Aren't you always exposed, every time you are on a flight?