Good for them!!!!!

Just read that South African Airlines had rescinded their ban after only 3 months.. ..SCI - Safari Club International is putting a lot of pressure on the airline industry.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027038378

While I agree that the countries' have corrupt governments, the real problem is driven by the demand - largely from US trophy hunters - that is costing the wildlife.

Ya done good!

Thank you Delta for changing your rules and putting the squeeze on this perverted practice...

i don''t want to hear any teabaggers bitching about this one.

go delta!

a) people generally don't transport trophies in personal baggage which is X-rayed at many points
b) The trophies are too large to check-in anyway
c) Customs of various countries (including the US) are likely to confiscate them.

Trophies are most probably shipped in container cargo to Mexico and then driven up the road.

"Trophy" animals were not being carried in luggage.

They go in the cargo hold.

Deer, Elk and Moose are regularly transported on planes. I know because I sat next to a guy on the plane that had a deer in the cargo hold of the plane.

I'm pretty sure that I know every damn step he made in bagging said deer because he wouldn't shut up about it, and I saw him collect his trunk in baggage.

Bow hunters are a pompous lot.

or a guy close enough to be a moose.

at 50 paces. It was eye watering, and I endured him from Chicago to Atlanta.

to their BKT excursions.

that the press, from the very beginning and continuing, refers to that jerk as "...an American dentist" rather than simply "an American man"? Just seems odd and unnecessary.

"The recent killing of a popular lion named Cecil by an American in Zimbabwe sparked considerable outrage..."

several years ago. It is definitely an important carrier to/from South Africa.

I wouldn't discount the number of trophy hunters who have probably flown first class on Delta to/from Africa.

You'd have to be at the really big bucks income level to fly a private jet to Africa--more than what the dentist
or OB/Gyn made in a year.

On edit: my husband flew coach.

Thanks for the thread, Initech.

He endlessly discussed the hunt he had (I fell asleep because I had been working for 18 hours straight to bring up a server). We are in baggage claim and his trunk comes by - blood is leaking out of it.

I thought to myself, you can carry bloody cargo but a water bottle is prohibited.

It was just gross.

Last thing I want to see at an airline baggage carousel is blood.

and listening to the idiot. He also stunk to high heaven.

Unlike South African Airlines, which is beholden to the big game hunting special interest groups in J-burg and Cape Town, Delta's African market is more evenly distributed across the continent. Other than Johannesburg, Delta serves Lagos, Nigeria, Dakar, Senegal, and Accra, Ghana. From what I've read, the governments of Nigeria, Senegal, and Ghana have publicly and vociferously opposed poaching (enforcement is a different question, but the policies are there).

Delta has worked to develop close relationships with those governments in order to fly there (as is customary in many African countries), and so this new policy will sow some goodwill with the citizens of those nations, and by default, the politicians/bureaucrats that Delta works with. If Delta were to renege on this agreement, it would look very bad and could endanger their business in these markets. For example, the West African Lion is the beloved national animal of Senegal.

I'm sorry.

I got a million of 'em.

But you're going to hell for that one

I am one of the ones who signed the petition and occasionally fly Delta.

We need to boycott or make the public aware of the airlines who still participate and support big game hunting