We transported our 10-week old puppy in a plane a few years ago in a carrier that fit under a seat. Although we took her out of it a couple times to “play” with her and keep her calm and welcomed to her new world.
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My parents bought a kitten in England and got a carrier for her for the flight to the US. She was supposed to go in the hold. Not long after the plane was at altitude, the Captain came back and told them he’d spotted her and decided to keep her in the cockpit! This was back in 1995.
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Ohmigosh - that is so crazy! She even had a “roof”!
On a flight a couple of weeks ago, a cute little dog appeared on the lap of a woman in the row in front of us. The flight attendant took the dog and asked if anyone was missing him. It belonged to the woman in the row behind us. She looked embarrassed…or maybe just tired because she also had an adorable (sleeping) 9 month-ish old baby with her.
They got the dog back in the carrier that was under the seat and a few minutes later the pup appeared on MY lap. I offered to just hold him and at first the woman said yes, but then said she had better put him back in his carrier. I got it for her and put it on the seat so the pup could see her.
It made for some fun on the flight.
We asked if she wanted help deboarding, but she declined. She had is all under control - she was impressive!
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Apparently they “dramatization” was based on this real story Woman called ‘rude and inconsiderate’ for using plastic sheet to cover her plane seat | The Independent
On a United flight last year, the woman across the aisle had a pet (in a carrier) and she said her ticket was $250 and the pet fee was $350 - and he didn’t get his own seat! She was trying to find overhead room for her carryon as the dog had to go under her seat, a center seat. The FA took pity and let her sit in the aisle seat and found another place for the guy originally in the aisle.
I think for $350 the dog should get his own seat, even if he has to ride in the area under the seat.
I don’t think a pet that isn’t a service animal (not an ESA) can ride in the cabin unless the pet is under 20 pounds. My niece’s dog, who used to ride as an ESA, can easily curl up and fit under a seat but he’s over 20 bounds and they won’t let him fly anymore.
Good point about the weight. I’d hate to see someone try to squish a medium sized dog into a small sized carry cage.
On the planes I fly, then space under the aisle seat 
a smaller than the center seat. Wonder what plane configuration has it another way?
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Many years ago, when our cats flew JetBlue as under the seat fare paying pax, I planned to book window and middle seats, but JetBlue advised us to get two aisle seats across from each other because the space under the middle seat was taken up by the entertainment system (yeah, make life even more miserable for the middle seaters 
).
The cat had to be able to turn around in the carrier that fit under the seat and weigh under 14 pounds. The pet fare was $100 back then. I still have the JetBlue branded carriers to take the cats to the vet.
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Boy, does this thread make me recall lots of travel issues:
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I remember fondly traveling halfway around the world when we were kids. Back then, flights had numerous stops. My sibling and I made a tent on the floor of the 747 we were traveling on, and we had a ball. It’s pretty ghastly to think what we were exposed to on that floor, but nothing bad happened and we were super comfortable for a super-long, multistop “direct flight.” That was one sure way to avoid some of the issues here. Probably not workable for most of us adults!
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I was in charge of admin for one of our offices a few years back, and our travel desk was one of the functions I had oversight of. I made sure that our internal travel folks checked seatguru.com before agreeing with the external travel agents on any seat assignments to make sure our folks had the best available seats at whatever fare we were booking. This was a few years ago, so perhaps there are better websites to check seating issues etc, but I still use this website today for our personal bookings. It gives you a lot of detail about an airline’s seat configuration for the specific aircraft that they fly (in other words, an American 737 is not likely to be the same as a United 737). We found it EXTREMELY useful.
Fascinating thread, to be sure.
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I don’t even remember when the airlines were nice, maybe in the nineties? Gate agents can do random things (like give away the international business seat you were already upgraded to, to their friend flying standby) like they did to my husband last month, but if you get lucky with your seat, I’d just count it as a win. Mostly, all they care about is butts in seats for the most $$ possible.
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@busdriver11, nothing nice from airlines these days. They actually care much less about loyalty and more about dollars from BIS as you say but they care especially about credit card and other partnerships. In some years, airlines can make more money by selling FF points than they do from actually flying.
@mynameiswhatever, I still use seatguru a fair bit. Not sure that there is anything better. It helps with leg room, whether the seats in exit rows are narrower due to putting TV screen into the armrests, and lack of recline. I don’t know if seatguru helps much with the oversized.
I have flights to DC, SF, Calgary, Reykyavik, Sao Paulo, Dubai and maybe Bahrain coming up. The non-North Atlantic ones will be business or first, so mimimal concern over the oversized but within NA, we are always concerned. Often, ShawWife and I fly on opposite aisle seats in a 3-3 setup, which beats middle or window with plus-sized neighbors I would think.
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If we’re going to do “trips from hell”… I’ll try to keep these brief so as not to occupy too much viewing space:
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As a kid, a couple times I suffered from motion sickness. Mom would say, “Tom, you’re green.” Dramamine usually helped after a while, but it’s no fun feeling like you have to barf.
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Kid kicking the seat all flight long (mentioned upthread). It abated somewhat – I think the kid must have fallen asleep. I was too paranoid to turn around to admonish the kid, because – not my kid. Also, I tend to bear the brunt of others’ wrongs and annoying behaviors to a greater degree than I probably should. I tend to grin and bear it… while it’s pretty stormy inside my head.
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Big-time sick cougher right next to me for six hours. I have a mild to moderate case of germaphobia, so every hack, cough, and sniffle gave me bitter beer face inside and out. I was very happy to get off that plane and into clean(er) air. Was paranoid that I would become sick, but I did not, miraculously.
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But the parents are fair game: “excuse me, but could you ask your child to not kick my seat? Thank you so much.”
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Agree. But what I really like about it is that it specifies the exact dimensions of seat sizes on the exact equipment on any given flight (assuming there is no aircraft substitution). It also gives user comments on specific seats and why they are good or bad.
It’s not perfect, and perhaps it doesn’t fully address the issues of this thread. But it does give passengers some idea of what are or aren’t good seats on the exact flight they are taking.
That reminds me: I need to check it for a flight our family is taking next week!
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been a big fan of seat guru for a long time but I think they were bought out and not always current. Also, consider:
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Thanks for this! I just made our seat assignments using SeatGuru, which is part of TripAdvisor.
I’ll double-check on the site you recommend too.
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great, let me know how it compares. I haven’t used it myself, as I just came across it last week. (But it was mentioned on several travel sites.)
Will do and, in fact, have done.
One thing I see with the new site is that it doesn’t give you the exact equipment that you will be flying on, whereas SiteGuru does.
We are travelling United, and when I logged into United, SeatGuru gave me two options for the equipment. Cross-checking that with SeatGuru, it was pretty easy to figure what the right equipment was on SeatGuru. The new site didn’t give me that option, AFAIK.
Fingers-crossed (as well as legs and arms) that it works.
To add, the new site gives specific seat dimensions too and other points about armrests that are stowable etc.
In this day and age, with travel resources so fragmented, I think it pays to check a couple of sites to make sure (as far as possible) that you get the best seat. The airline sure as heck ain’t going to tell us.
Yes, it might not help thread directly for this thread, but it’s as good as it gets for seat assignments, along with SeatGuru.
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Another fan of seat guru. Sometimes it takes a few checks to find the exact configuration of the plane ( eg several versions of a 747-200) but its a minor inconvenience. There’s another site with similar features but I prefer seat guru.
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