Report Details

Incident 1

Carrier: Horizon Air Flight: 2356 (PDX/GEG) Date of incident: February 20th, 2013 Time of incident: Approximately 5:00 P.M. PT

Description of animal (including name): A male dog, service animal. (Unknown: name, or age of dog)

Narrative description of incident: Customer called Customer Care the day after her travel to state that a gate agent injured her dog’s foot by breaking its toenail when she picked up the dog’s carrier and the carrier door swung open and the dog fell out. Our immediate research produced corroborated statements from the gate agents that they did not approach the customer or her dog but recall seeing the dog jumping on and off the customer’s lap until boarding time and saw no signs of injury. We then spoke to our wheelchair vendor’s employee, who transported our customer from the gate to the plane, who recalled that the dog was on the customer’s lap along with its carrier and at the plane the customer arose and started to board the aircraft leaving the dog on the wheelchair seat. The dog then jumped from the chair and started to run away, whereupon he grabbed its leash and brought the dog, its carrier and the customer’s carry-on bag to the customer at her seat, but noted no injury to the pet.

Narrative description of the cause of the incident: We take preventative measures by training all ground service and passenger service employees, including vendors, of proper and safe handling of animals. The airline believes that its employees and vendor did nothing to harm the pet and that any injury was due solely to passenger’s failure to control her pet.

Narrative description of any corrective action taken in response to the incident: Despite the above conclusion, for the sake of good customer relations we offered the customer compensation in the form of a discount code for future travel which she readily accepted. The station manager in Portland has been made aware of this incident and will remind employees and the vendor that it is good practice always to encourage passengers to control their pets for the safety of the pet and others in its vicinity.