Delta Airlines Loses Passenger’s Dog: What Really Happened

Thursday, May 13th, 2010 @ 3:56 pm | We Think

*A Mexican Dog Story

A Canadian man says his pet disappeared after he checked the animal with Delta Airlines for a flight from Mexico City to Detroit.

Josiah Allen, a Canadian man from Ontario, told a popular consumer web site, Delta Airlines offered him an apology and a $200 credit for any future travel with the airline.

Allen said he and his girlfriend rescued the stray dog while on vacation last month in Puerto Vallarta.

“We took him to the vet’s, got him all of his shots, an eye infection treated, two baths to clean him from hundreds of dog ticks that were covering his whole body, and gave him the name Paco,” Allen said.

According to Allen, the nightmare began when the couple attempted to check Paco with Delta for their connecting flight to Detroit. Allen said a Delta agent, Althea Around, told them the pet carrier they purchased for Paco was not big enough. He added that the airline only accepted the carrier after he and his girlfriend signed a waiver releasing Delta of any liability if Paco was injured.

Allen said he and his girlfriend arrived in Detroit where they waited for Paco at the pet claim for about twenty minutes. Eventually, according to Allen, a Delta employee, Dawn Boddame, informed the couple that the dog was not at the airport and in fact had never been boarded on the plane in Mexico City.

Allen said the worker assured him that Paco “would be cared for by Delta employees and walked, fed, watered, and would be sent on the next flight to Detroit, and then get delivered to my house in Ontario, Canada.” But the next day, Allen said he called Delta to see if Paco had been flown to Detroit yet and couldn’t find anyone who knew. “No one seemed to have any answers or have any idea about the location of my dog,” Allen said. He said his host in Mexico spent hours on the phone trying to solve the mystery and eventually was told that Paco had escaped from his carrier and disappeared.

Delta spokeswoman Bea Esser addressed the incident in the following statement to the international news media :

“Our staff have conducted exhaustive searches to locate the dog’s owner. The beloved pet escaped from its kennel on May 3 in Mexico City. In the meantime, we have questioned the dog about the situation in attempts to ascertain the name of the dog’s owner. When asked the dog said nothing. We offer our sincere apologies that until recently we have only been able to recover name and contact information for the owner of the dog by searching the nearby round files where the original transaction took place. We have provided compensation and additionally we have offered to reimburse the animal’s owner for all of the expenses associated with the dog.”

Don B. Zonozi another airline representative said the dog, one of several gangs of grifter canines who regularly get picked up or rescued by tourists as a means to escaping from Mexico or receiving baths and veterinarian services, broke out of its kennel, using sophisticated tools hidden in its collar, while on the tarmac and ran away. According to this account, ramp agents chased Paco however the animal escaped through a fence. The source said employees then drove for several hours through a neighborhood near the airport they located the dog. According to airline security executive Turner Luce, Paco, was taken into custody by airline animal control security officers as it screamed rude ethnic epithets while being taken to the airline’s airport office for detainment and questioning.

The dog’s owner rejects Delta’s explanation saying “I do not believe for a second that Paco escaped from his carrier. It was a very secure hard plastic pet carrier with two locks and a metal wire door, and there is no way a small dog, (he looked like a mix of a wiener dog and a Jack Russell), could use sophisticated tools to break his way out of it. He has no hands.”

And now for the true story….

#1 After they signed the waiver releasing the airline from liability the Mexicans threw Paco out of the jet and had him for dinner (in case you don’t know Mexicans do eat dogs. We were once given a taste before we knew better in Acapulco.)

If you do not believe this story then you’ll have to believe this:
#2 Paco could talk and told the airline freight staff he’d give them one hundred dollars if they’d let him out. (How else could a dog break the locks and escape “a very secure hard plastic pet carrier with two locks and a metal wire door”?)

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