Thread: What happened to PACO???

We had an extremely similar incident happen when I was at OH. We always held live animals inside until just before departure, rather than sitting them on the ramp for the whole turn. As the aircraft was about to depart one morning, one of our ramp agents came out with a cat in a small kennel. When she was just a few feet from the aircraft, the bottom tray of the kennel seperated from the rest, and fell to the ground along with the cat. Cats like to be around the APU of a CRJ just as much as I like to, and this cat darted off across the ramp and was never heard from again. I'm not certain how the situation was resolved with the customer.

I've had one instance where ATL killed a shipment of live animals. Luckily it was a shipment of live crabs to be eaten, so I'm pretty certain the value of the goods was paid to the consignee and everyone got on with their day. O yea, after ATL left the crabs out in the sun to die, they were smart enough to load them onto the aircraft. When the aircraft arrived, you could smell the crabs in every inch of the cabin, including the cockpit. Every bag in the pit was ruined. I went through a couple cans of lav spray, and had to delay the departure for an hour while the aircraft aired out.



I had one other instance where a passenger and their dog were travelling together, and due to a flight cancellation were seperated. This was a Sunday in the middle of summer, I was the shift supervisor. They originated in HNL, and when their flight out of ATL cxld, the pax was rebooked via MSP. Meanwhile, the dog sat out on the ramp in ATL with no water for about 10 hours before he was finally loaded onto an ASA CRJ. When the dog arrived, he was in terrible shape. I immediately called the airport paramedics and my station manager. We gave the dog a little water, but he wouldn't drink. We put some cool water on his belly and his legs until my station manager arrived and took the dog to the vet. As soon as he left I called the pax(who was sitting in MSP) and informed him of the situation and allowed him to vent about his whole experience with DL. Then I spoke with OH and EV OCC about the situation. Eventually I sat down and ate my cold dinner. When the pax arrived a few hours later I greeted him on the jetbridge with all the vet info and every customer service phone number/email I could come up with as well as my name and email. At this point he was alot less angry, and was very appreciative of the actions we had taken. He then went right to the vet where my station manager was still with the dog.

The dog had gotten severe heatstroke/dehydration. The dog was given IV fluids and stayed at the vets a couple more nights. The vet told us the dog had about 20-30 mins left when we got him off the airplane. The last I had heard was the dog ended up being fine, I just don't know about any lasting effects of this. I'm not completely certain how this was handled between DL and the pax. I know there was a big debate over whether DL, NW, EV, or OH should pay the bill.

I hope to never see a similar situation. It was rediculous and should never have happened and should never happen again. It doesn't even take someone caring about their job, it just takes someone caring. To have all those employees in ATL see this situation developing, and just ignore it is rediculous. If I ever saw an unattended animal at work, whether it be DLs or any other carriers, I always checked on it and found someone to attend to it. And that was never me protecting my job, that was me being a Human Being. If you can't tell, I was very disgusted by this situation, and really I still am today.