The battle cry “party like it’s 1999” weirdly hits home with me. Unless your mailing address was listed as “the jungles of Borneo,” or you had not made the trip through your mother’s birthing canal yet, chances are that you remember the anxiety (“insanity” actually) of the closing days of the 20^th century. The computer software brain trust was loudly warning that a complete worldwide melt-down was imminent the moment the computer clocks displayed 00:01 of the year 2000. Power grids would disappear, Air Traffic Control facilities would go dark, hospitals would lose power, internet connections would be gone, and we would be forced to live as our great, great grandparents had. It was known as the “Y2K virus”, and it turned out to be a complete load of nonsense.

But we, as citizens of Mother Earth, had no idea what would happen, and that unknown could easily become a vicious enemy. It was a HUGE thing, and it affected yours truly in a big way. I was scheduled a rather serious medical procedure during that last month of the century, a biopsy was urgently needed for a tumor had been recently found by an incidental chest x-ray. The medical types rushed me into the hospital two days before Christmas 1999, fearing that if I waited past the calamity of “Y2K”, my needed procedure might be delayed indefinitely. The boatload of worry and stress was beyond description, and in the end, it was a total waste of a massive amount of anxiety.

(Pretty much says it all.)

(Side note #1: the results of the biopsy would eventually lead me onto the whirling dervish of a regime of chemotherapy and radiation treatments at the Mayo Clinic)

(Side note #2: the promise of a 1-day stay for the biopsy, turned into a 3-day stint … to include listening to the dude next to me expire on Christmas eve! The stay had me “enjoying” Christmas Day among the sights, smells, and sounds of a hospital bed. Saying it sucked does not do it justice).

Speaking of anxiety, the subject of this rant concerns one such version of that horrible human condition…that being a fear of flying. Finding oneself in an airline cabin a few miles above terra firma, sends some poor folks over the anxiety cliff. Not just a mild, “oh crap, I hate flying” thing due to the myriad annoying issues we associate with taking an airline trip, but real honest to God, debilitating fear.  We all put up with the non-stop hassle of airline flying. Crowded airport terminals, massive lines at the ticket counter, TSA security portals manned by “angry elves”, nagging airline delays, airplanes filled to the gunnels, and the final headache of headaches; the fact that our culture has almost totally abandoned manners and common courtesy in our daily lives. The result is an unpleasant experience to say the least. A massive pain in the ass to be sure, but most certainly not filled with the horror of volumes of anxiety.

(Side note #3: The fact that we have become a population that is far too “large” to occupy the seats on the jets, adds more fuel to the fire that airline flying has become a generally horrible experience.)

We all have phobias and anxiety…anyone that proclaims otherwise is either a liar, or a fool. For instance, I am unnerved by heights. What is that you say? A person that spent their entire working life at 30 something thousand feet is afraid of heights? Had the likes of Cessna, or Boeing, or McDonnel Douglas, etc. installed windows on the floor of their cockpits, I would have spent my working life as something OTHER than a professional aviator. I despise being on an extension ladder, and the fact that my wonderful wife convinced me to take a hot air balloon ride, is the subject of an ongoing family mystery. This same woman, on the other hand, LOVES heights. She not only has flung herself out of an airplane skydiving, but when on a tall structure, is the first person to run and peer over the edge. Our time spent on the “viewing deck” of the Empire State Building was with my back firming pressed against the building. She however, logged quality time at the edge peering over the above mentioned edge. It seems that I was fine when looking out of the cockpit windshields, but not so fine if you would have asked me to look straight down. Nope, not going to happen.

Plenty of folks simply do not enjoy flying, but a select few fall into a different category altogether. Their time spent jammed in the metal tube at 30,000’ takes them to a dark place that is nothing short of prolonged cruelty. I’ve seen it many times over the years, and one of my earliest blog pieces mentioned it ( https://bubba757.com/2015/04/28/little-max/ ). It is a personal hell that I have no experience with, but I know it is a cruel monster and I have true empathy for those afflicted.

(It hurts my brain just looking at it.)

So, what is the answer for those afflicted with such a level of anxiety? The answer is obviously complex, but many years ago, we in the aviation world witnessed something bordering on the absurd. In stepped the organization that should not attempt to “do what they do” …and legislate away human suffering. Far too many answers for far too many issues start as a “good idea”, which then becomes stained by the interference of “Government”. The result invariably becomes an overpriced, over rated, ineffective program. The old saying, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” seems to be an apt description of the Government’s answer for a litany of maladies.

In 1986 the Congress of the United States passed the Air Carrier Access Act which prohibited airlines from discriminating against passengers with disabilities. This was a superb idea, and since many disabled folks travel with a “service animal,” the airlines were now required to allow passengers to bring them onboard the aircraft. However, as with all things touched by the sledge hammer of legislation, it became more than it was intended to be. As the ACAA became more prominent, there began a move afoot to morph this into a broad-brush approach to cover those with the “disability” of high anxiety. With this, the “Emotional Support Animal” program was born. Folks were now allowed to bring their furry friends into the cabin, thus assuaging their nervous thoughts and lowering their “anxiety volume” down a notch (or twelve). You were now allowed (by law) to bring that adorable little kitten “Fluffy” onboard to calmly sit in your lap and softly purr your fears away.

(If you don’t love Fluffy, then you suck…)

That was all fine and dandy at first, but things changed, and the horror of September 11^th would usher in those changes in a big way. Following that infamous day, everyone’s level of anxiety took a giant leap on the “sphincter Richter scale”. I saw this in spades for months following the attack, and for some people, it was worse than awful to find themselves on an airliner. There was, however, one small bright spot in all of this. A wonderful by-product of that event, seemed to be that people began to act in a way that seemed to be extinct within our airline cabins…they were actually “nice” to each other. It was good to see, but like most things involving humanity, after a few months it began to wane. Within a few short years, we were back on the roller coaster of cranky people being crammed into metal tubes and bouncing them through the atmosphere for the “low, low price” of hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of dollars. Where’s “Fluffy” when you need her? It makes me anxious just writing about it.

So, the question arises…was it a good idea to allow folks to bring their “comfort animals” (“Fluffy”?) into the cabin? In some cases, I am sure it was. However, not surprisingly, some passengers began to “massage the rules” to take advantage of the ACAA and the “ESA Program.” Not long after this newfound policy was adopted, Delta Airlines released a statistic that showed there had been an “over 80% increase in animal incidents within the cabin of the aircraft.” It seems that not all the animals that came through the boarding doors at Delta were indeed service animals, and it was immediately obvious that one person’s definition of an “emotional support animal” did not fit someone else’s.

(Side note #4: Due to the massive abuse that was occurring regarding the ESA Program, since December 2020, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) no longer includes emotional support animals in the Air Carrier Access Act.)

As the ESA Program became official, it seems that the only people that could envision this being abused were none other than the folks that worked onboard the flying machines. We, the pilots and cabin attendants, predicted that a certain segment of the population would use this to their advantage, and we were right. Shortly after learning about this new government program, I found myself standing next to an American Airlines ticket agent in the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport. He and I were in line at a food vendor, and after striking up a conversation, I casually queried him about how this “ESA thing” was working at his airline. His answer left me speechless. With a perturbed look, he calmly relayed the level of insanity his line has dealt with since its inception. It seems that in the first week of the program, at ONLY the La Guardia airport in New York, their agents had passengers attempting to bring onboard the airplane the following “emotional support animals” (to include the normal creatures, aka “Fluffy”): a goat, a pig, a tarantula, a cockatoo, and (my favorite) a duck dressed in a tuxedo! We both looked at each other and shook our heads. I am not sure that one would need a degree in psychology to deduce that if a person needs “Monty”, the “duck formally adorned for an evening at the opera”, to feel “emotionally stable” at 30,000’, then maybe that person should consider an alternate from of travel (Greyhound, Uber, hitch-hiking, teleportation?) …just a thought.

(What duck doesn’t love to step out on the town in their tuxedo?)

With that said, I will relate but one of the many animal incidents dealt with during my career in an airline cockpit. During April of 2019 (roughly a year before my retirement), I was flying between Minneapolis/St. Paul and the sunbaked, concrete mess known as LAX. We were tasked with a simple flight from our domicile in Minnesota, to Los Angeles, and then return home. We call them “day turns” and they are typically the mark of an easy day. On this particular flight we were flying the stretched version of Mr. Boeing’s wonderful 757 (known as the 757-300…and truth be told, I did not enjoy flying this machine at all…it is ANOTHER example of a good idea going wrong…but that’s fodder for another blog).

All was proceeding as planned with a full load of folks, nice weather at both airports, and a generally smooth ride southwest across the heartland of America. As we neared the gambling capital of the world (” sin city”, “glitter gulch”, “the divorce capital of America”) …you know, Las Vegas, the chime sounded indicating that the Purser wished to speak to us. Typically, with just under an hour remaining in the flight, the cabin attendants will call to either; A) offer any food left over, or B) request certain items be available at the gate (wheel chairs, escorts of “unaccompanied minors,” etc.) …this was neither of those. As I answered the interphone, the Purser announced, “Well Captain, he did it. I knew he would, and he finally did!”

This of course, is NOT what I had expected to hear, and I was both curious as to “who did what”, and most importantly, how it affected the safety of the flight? Lots of things were now swirling around in my noggin; everything from an actual “security” event, to a drunk getting obnoxious and deciding to display his naked self to all in the cabin (I have had both). Again, this was neither.

Apparently, as the 220+ nice folks were boarding the jet in Minneapolis, a young man came into the cabin with his “comfort animal” …no harm, no foul. Except if you were unlucky enough to be seated in the row with “Spencer” and his version of “Fluffy” (not his real name of course…he just looked like a Spencer…my apologies to all the “Spencers” of the world).  I was not aware that he had boarded with this animal, for keeping me informed of all the proclivities of the “comfort animals” at the departure gate would rank about “number last” on my list of “Preflight Duties”. I was now about to be fully informed.

(“Spencer’s” twin brother…why do all “yupsters” have the same look…again, sorry to all the “Spencers” of the world.)

My obvious first utterance to the Purser was; “Who is HE, and what did HE DO?”  His answer was something on the order of, “He is a dog, and he took a dump in the middle of the isle! AND… (there is always an “and”) the owner is being an ass about cleaning it up!” Of course, my mind envisioned cute little “Spike” and his small, innocuous little pile of excrement that one can pick up with a single swoop of a paper towel, etc. This was not the case. As I was mentioning this to the Purser, he interrupted me with the words…” Hang on a second Captain, the dog is a HUGE GREAT DANE, and the dump looks like it came from a circus elephant! It stinks to high heaven, and many of the passengers for several isles are about to throw up just smelling it!” Lovely.

 (Side note #6. I have said it before, and I’ll say it again, but when they hand you that coveted “fourth stripe” of Captaincy, they send you to a several day “Captain’s School”. They review all the rules, regulations, jargon, etc. that you have been studying for years…but it’s all rather useless. They NEVER mention how to act “Captain like” in this type of instance…OR when the dude decides to bare his “birthday suit” to everyone on the jet…just saying. Maybe they can use a syllabus change.)

(I truly have no desire to see what they’re leaving in their wake…)

My thoughts now turned to visions of a herd of elephants lazily strolling across the plains of Serengeti…and the huge piles they were depositing as fertilizer. My “Captain brain” kicked into gear, and I informed the Purser that we were about :30 from going “Sterile Cockpit” (last twenty minutes or so of the flight when we are far too busy to deal with things like this in the cabin), so he would have to deal with it and “get it done”. My offer was to inform “Spencer” that the Captain is ordering him to: A) corral “Marmaduke” and keep him out of the isle, B) get his ass out of his seat and clean up after his dog, and C) to speak to me at the gate in Los Angeles.

This seemed to put the Purser back into his happy place, and he said he would gladly provide the dude with all the needed cleaning supplies and make sure it gets done (we would also advise the cabin cleaners at LAX to give that section of the cabin an extra dose of sanitation). Within a few minutes, he called back to the cockpit to say that “Spencer” was not happy about my decision to have HIM clean up after “Marmaduke”, but that he did it anyway. I was now beginning to look forward to having a bit of a chat with “Spencer” at the deplaning gate.

(The real “Marmaduke”!)

The arrival into LAX went without further incident, and after securing the jet with the “Shutdown” and “Parking” checklists, I unstrapped to proceed to the deplaning door to finally have a chance to meet “Marmaduke” (by now he was beginning to be a legend in our feeble pilot minds…lol). Sadly, he and “Spencer” dashed out the door as I walked down the isle to door 2L, and I was only able to grab a quick shot of “Marmaduke” and give his owner “Spencer” my best “I knew what you were doing bringing this huge dog onboard the jet! You look as normal as the next guy, and you were simply getting around the shipping fees to move this horse/dog across the country.” He sheepishly looked away as I visually bored a hole in the back of his head.

(Side note #7. Many times, over the years, I have looked into the eyes of those that have a true fear of flying. They have “the look”, and it’s not the sad, shell-shocked gaze known as the “thousand-yard stare”, it’s more of a look gazing inward at a demon that could easily become them. I once had a lady come to the cockpit at the gate in Orlando to speak to me about her fear of flying. She sat down on the jumpseat behind my seat, and promptly vomited all over me! Now, SHE had “the look.” Yep, the “glamor of aviation” cannot be measured in dollars and cents…lol. Trust me, “Spencer” did not have that look. )

The upside? My picture of the dog came out great, and what a beautiful canine indeed! “Marmaduke” was big…and I mean big…. standing about belt-high, and marked with a stunning array of black and white “Appaloosa” spots. He seemed very friendly, super happy, and was probably a wonderful pet and companion. The downside is I seemed to have lost the photo of he and “Spencer” fleeing the scene of the crime. I do, however, have a bit of a warm feeling knowing that for the rest of his days, “Marmaduke” will be leaving his owner some rather large “piles of love” for him to deal with. I can only hope that “Spencer” someday becomes a better/smarter human and pet owner, because from what I could quickly deduce, “Marmaduke” seemed to be the brains of the outfit.

(A beautiful canine to be sure …”have a good life Marmduke!”)

‘till next time.

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