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

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

Quick Background: Just a few years ago, one of the major challenges facing Southwest and other airlines was the increase in the number of passengers who insisted on bringing emotional support animals on board.

The airlines had little choice in this regard. Federal rules allowed people on planes to be accompanied by service animals, but “ service animal ” was not really defined.

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

That, in turn, sparked a “wave” of incidents of “barking, biting, biting, growling and fighting” in passenger cabins, according to the same report.

Last week, however, Southwest Airlines took the big step to basically keep most so-called emotional support animals out of their cabins.

Effective March 1, 2021, Southwest said in a statement, the airline will only accept trained service dogs for travel and will no longer carry emotional support animals, adding:

With this revision, Southwest Airlines only allows service dogs that have been individually trained to do work or perform duties on behalf of a qualified person with a disability to travel with the customer.

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

Now, of course, Southwest is not alone with this new policy. As I wrote earlier, American, Delta and United Airlines, along with smaller airlines, changed their rules earlier this month.

At the time, Southwest told me there were no changes to announce. At least one report suggested that some travelers hoped that Southwest, “known for its independent spirit, might not join” the ban. Unfortunately, now they have caught up with the others.

It all comes in response to the U.S. government’s revision of its own rules in December that established a definition for service animals, allowing airlines to prove they have been trained, and giving airlines the option of keeping emotional support animals as pets. classify.

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

But this rule change should make life easier for flight attendants dealing with the animals – including in situations where passengers and flight attendants were bitten or otherwise injured by them. (Examples: here, here and here.)

Now, I know this all seems like five crises ago, so to speak. It’s a great time to be in the aviation industry now.

Over the past week, we’ve seen so many other developments: the CDC, for example, requiring all air passengers (and people on other modes of public transport) to wear masks, which should hopefully take some of the burden off the flight attendants’ shoulders.

Add to this the massive losses most airlines have recently recorded (Southwest had its first annual loss in nearly 50 years), the debate over whether or not to lock middle seats, and as Southwest President Tom Nealon put it, the prospect of a “ goat rodeo “if the government would require airlines to test passengers on Covid prior to domestic flights.

All of this makes it feel a bit better to (apparently) get to the end of the emotional support animal story.

One more point: I am not aware that this has ever had a real impact on the airlines’ bottom line because of this problem. Passengers who were flying might have complained, but it wasn’t like they could go to another airline that had stricter rules; they all had to follow federal law.

But here the airlines could work together, ultimately for the benefit of employees who did not want to monitor this issue alongside all their other responsibilities. It took years to fix, and if you’re a business leader in any industry I think the lesson is worth taking to heart.