Posted on 06/25/2010 9:40:13 AM PDT by stevie_d_64
ATLANTA (AP) -- A caged, 2-inch turtle traveling with a 10-year-old girl caused a crew to turn around a taxiing plane, take the girl and her sisters off the flight and tell them they couldn't bring their pet along.
The sisters threw the animal and cage in the trash and returned to their seats crying Tuesday after AirTran Airways employees on the jetway said they couldn't care for the turtle while their father drove to retrieve it. Two days later, however, Carley Helm was reunited with Neytiri even though at first the family thought the pet was emptied with the trash.
Carley was heading home to Milwaukee after visiting her father in Atlanta with sisters Annie, 13, and Rebecca, 22, when the flap unfolded.
Rebecca said the three were led onto the jetway and told they'd have to get rid of the baby red ear slider -- named Neytiri after the princess in the movie "Avatar" -- if they wanted to reboard.
"I asked, 'What do you mean get rid of it?' and they said throw it away," she said. "I was very sad, and I felt bad for my littlest sister because it was her first pet and she was planning to take care of it herself."
While the sisters say they were told to put the animal in the trash, AirTran says they chose that themselves, despite an offer to fly later at no extra charge.
AirTran company policy bars animals other than cats, dogs and household birds in the cabin, said spokesman Christopher White. White cited a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that says the reptiles have been known to carry salmonella bacteria.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
wow. I hope they appreciate Dad
Absolutely the most pathetic thing I have heard in a long time...
Obviously common sense is something seriously lacking, and not expected of reasonable “employed, airline” personnel these days...
Enough is ENOUGH! I have had it with these ************’ turtles on this ************’ plane! ...
I recently rode on Southwest Airlines with a BIG german shephard service dog, three rows in front of us. It crapped and puked the whole trip. And the guy traveling with it wasn’t blind or handicapped in any way.
World gone mad. Throw your turtle in the trash little girl. Rules are rules.
Yeah, pretty bad, but not as bad as forcing people to sit on a plane for 6 hours in 100 degree heat, due to power failures. Just happened a few days ago, in Conneticut. People passing out, screaming, vomiting.
I don’t plan on getting on a plane unless it’s an absolute emergency.
What do you really expect-?! Look what they do to unborn BABIES, for God’s Sake-!
I would have faked a heart attack to get off that plane.
Then “recovered” at the hospital.
So do human visitors from third-world countries, and I suspect the risk of transmission in an airline cabin is much higher from them than from the turtle.
Just as much of a dearth of heart, compassion and plain old common sense here as in our schools.
No wonder our kids are so screwed up.
“It crapped and puked the whole trip”
It probably got airsick. The same thing happens to people.
I don’t plan on getting on a plane unless it’s an absolute emergency.
Ditto.
My Mother rescued a “Heinz 57” breed of dog, from a frozen over lake in Star City Russia years ago...Went out in the frozen broken ice, nearly froze herself to save this one a three other pups from the Russian form of animal control...All while one of the American Astronauts wives was screaming from the shoreline to save the puppies...Funny story in and of itself...
Mom was about to rotate back to the states the next week, and since she found homes for all but one, she palmed $100 to a Russian friend of hers and got a carrying crate, that would fit in her lap, and some “official” (wink, wink) looking Russian Federation health department “papers” to allow her to bring the pup back over with her to the states...
She was allowed by AeroFlot and KLM to have that pup sit in her lap the whole way home...Something like 20+ hours in her lap...
It can be done...hehehe, gotta love those Ruskies!!!
Amazing what a $100 can do for ya...I think a local mafia guy found the crate for her and the pup...
But apparently some folks over here draw the line at reptiles...Salmonella??? Puleezzzzeee...
Bingo.
A society gone mad adrift in a sea of political correctness.
So does uncooked beef and chicken, garden soil and pet dogs.
So what?
“If I don’t save the wee turtles who will? Ah! Save me from the wee turtles! They were too quick for me.”
— Groundskeeper Willie
Ever Had salmonella? If not Trust me you dont want it. What if it was a pet snake.
They are fortunate I wasn’t on that plane. I’m certain I would have completley lost it and got myself arrested. Which would have gotten me off the plane at least.
Many lawsuits to follow, I believe it was Virgin airlines, a flight diverted from Newark N.J. due to severe thunderstorms. While on the tarmac in Conneticut, the plane had electrical problems causing the air conditioning to fail. They would not let anyone off the plane. I don’t understand how they do this. To my way of thinking it’s the same as holding you hostage.
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