Southwest Upping the Price on Your Pooch to $95

It’ll soon cost more to bring your pet with you when you fly on Southwest Airlines.The airline is citing higher costs in raising its pet fee to $95 per flight from $75 beginning with flights on 1/15/14.
Southwest Airlines Co. lets passengers bring a vaccinated dog or cat that fits in a carrier that goes under an airline seat. Pets are taken on a first-come basis, up to six per flight.
Southwest, which began carrying pets in 2009, charges less for the service than many other U.S. carriers. United, Delta, American and US Airways all charge $125 each way, while JetBlue and Alaska charge $100.

What really is the "cost" to the airline for bringing a pet on-board, in the cabin, under the seat? :rolleyes: If the pet fits under the seat (we're not talking a 30+ pound german shepherd), the weight factor would be negligible and no different than carry on bags. It's not like the airline is providing meals and drinks for the pet.

I think it may be part of a fee to reduce how often people do it. Just imagine if 10% of passengers brought their dogs, just because they could. On a full 737, you're looking at what, just over a dozen dogs on every flight? Going by the "law of really big numbers" you're going to get a lot more noisy dogs for everyone else (and with dogs, that stuff can be contagious :) ), a greater likelihood of accidents (time, money, and most importantly delays in getting that cleaned up) and a lot of other unintended consequences that can arise from having a dog on board less than rarely.

And as the summary above mentioned, there is technically a limit to the number of animals that can go on a plane. When I was at SkyWest, we were told 1 animal in the cabin at a time, but that could also be waived with the PIC's permission (which supposedly happened more often than not).