When Pigs Fly
Don’t complain if you find yourself seated next to a pig on your next flight. It may be a service pig providing emotional support to its owner. Under newly revised Department of Transportation guidelines, the pig might have just as much right to fly as you.

When rules were first written in 1966, a service animal was usually a guide dog. Now all kinds of animals serve a wide array of disabilities. Revised rules are intended in part to help airline personnel distinguish mentally healthy pretenders with pets from mentally ill passengers with emotional support animals.

There really are such things. Psychiatric service animals help people disabled by panic disorder, post-traumatic stress syndrome, depression and brain chemistry dysfunction, according to the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners. Its Web site explains, for example, that animals can arouse a person who has zoned out by tapping or nudging, can fetch meds and can create a comfort zone around people who panic in crowds.

But new uses have opened the door to fraud. “People have tried to bring on board rodents, ferrets, monkeys and snakes for emotional support,” says David Berg, an attorney for the Air Transport Association, an airline trade group. In one case, a woman showed up for a cross-country flight with a 300-pound pot-bellied pig, claiming it was a service animal. The pig went berserk and tried to ram the cockpit.

Service animals fly free, although airlines may ask for documentation, such as a letter from a licensed mental health professional. And under the new rules, airlines are not required to carry on board ferrets, rodents, reptiles or spiders, no matter how emotionally supportive they may be.

(source: washington post article that’s no longer available in the free archives)