United Airlines "Comfort Pet" Policy is bizarre!

Okay - time for a departure from the usual content of my blog entries. This one is a true story you may find hard to believe.

Last week, I was on a flight from Denver to LAX. Before I boarded, I noticed a young lady in her twenties with a large pit bull in the waiting area. She had it on a leash, and there was no crate for it in sight. When I boarded the plane, I made my way to my place, which was my usual aisle seat. After I settled in, here came the young lady, down the aisle, still with her pit bull on a leash. Sure enough, she ended up seated at the window of my row, with this big dog in the seat next to me. At this point, I thought this was certainly unusual. I had seen people on planes before with small dogs or cats. and always in pet carriers, but never a dog this size!

Then a young man came down the aisle and located his seat, which was....the middle seat between me and the window girl and her dog! That is when I decided to consult the flight attendant at the back of the plane. It couldn't possibly be okay to have a full row with three people PLUS a large uncontained dog. Her response? With United, passengers are allowed to have a "comfort pet" accompany them on a plane, no matter what the size of the animal. She even said if someone brought a pet as large as a pony on board, they would have to try to make it work!

The flight attendants did find a seat for the poor guy in the middle seat up in economy plus, but that just meant I had this large dog in the seat next to me. The dog was well behaved the entire time, but I wondered what would happen if a dog with a difficult or territorial disposition ended up on a plane. As I left, I noticed the dog had left large quantities of dog hair all over the seats of that row, and wondered how the cleaning crew would handle that.

Is it just me, or is that a ridiculous policy for United Airlines to have regarding pets on their flights?