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I am a single mom with three young kids ages 6, 7, and 8
years old. My 7 year old son has
Asperger Syndrome and a service dog named Angel. We travel a lot so I called
your airline - United, before the flight to make sure they knew that Angel would be with us, that she is a large breed dog, we
need bulk-head seating, and she is in fact a service dog.
When we arrived they said there were not four seats
available in bulk head, but that the gate would work something out for us. She even said "A single mom with three
kids, one with special needs and a service dog; they better help you out or I
wouldn't fly with us ever again either".
Our first flight went fine.
They were able to get us in bulk-head, everyone was sweet, and we had an
uneventful flight.
When we got to
Denver however, there was a delay and the lady at the gate was cranky and
stressed. She put us in the back two rows on the Very small plane. Angel is an
80 pound Great Pyrenees so I wasn't sure how it was going to go? (it was very small plane)
I laughed at how
small and tight the seats were. I really
had no idea what we were going to be able to do with Angel. The flight attendant at the back was trying
to be positive and helpful so we just started trying to SHOVE Angel in between
the seats. Jackson, my son, was getting
very stressed about it and Angel could tell. She jumped up on the seat next to him and put
her paw on him to keep him calm.
She was doing her job and I was
still brainstorming with the flight attendant about what we could do when the
flight attendant at the front stormed back to us and without knowing the
situation at all says to me "If you can't get your DOG under control the
pilot has said I should have the entire family removed from the
plane". I was in SHOCK and
Horrified. My children looked at me in
terror and Jackson completely lost it due to the fact that he takes words very
literally and thought that we were getting kicked off the plane. The other passengers started sticking up for
us, but she kept saying, "is there a problem? You will be removed".
Angel somehow knew I was upset now too and
by herself crawled under the seats and laid there curled in a ball. She literally had to fold her self in half when the cart or someone came by.
(Notice in the picture this is WITHOUT Jackson and I sitting in the seats that she was squishing into...)
I hid my tears from the kids and I assured
them we did nothing wrong. The flight attended in the back apologized, was clearly embarrassed and
handed me tissues.
We have never been
treated that way and I had no way of kindly explaining it to my children. My son keeps telling people that the lady on
the plane hated us and was going to kick us off because he has Aspergers and a special
dog to help him. It was, and still is, very
upsetting.
