American Airlines Sent Dog To Philadelphia Instead Of Raleigh, Investigation Underway

A woman accused American Airlines of losing her dog as she was flying from San Francisco to Raleigh, North Carolina. The dog, which was supposed to reach Raleigh, wounded up in Philadelphia, hundreds of miles away from its owner.

Speaking to local media WRAL, Amber Dalton said she was boarding a flight in San Francisco when an American Airline employee pulled her out of line and told her the connecting flight to Chicago couldn’t carry animals onboard. She was then booked on a different connecting flight, through Dallas. The airline told her her dog, named Beast, would be on the same plane as her to Dallas. However, when her flight landed at the destination, she learned that the airline sent her dog all the way to Philadelphia on a non-stop flight.

“I go to look for my pet in the oversized baggage, and there’s no pets arriving,” Dalton told WRAL expressing her shock.

Dalton said when she contacted the airline, officials said they had no idea where her dog was. However, some hours later the airline realized it had mistakenly sent the canine to Philadelphia.

An American Airlines employee drove the dog from Philadelphia to Roanoke, where Dalton was eventually headed, and she was finally reunited with her pet.

American Airlines issued a statement Tuesday reportedly saying it was investigating the incident:

American Airlines takes the well-being of our four-legged passengers very seriously. As a result, we weren’t able to reunite a checked pet with their owner [Tuesday] on a trip from San Francisco (SFO) to Raleigh-Durham (RDU). To ensure the safety and health of animals we transport, our policies regulate the types of aircraft, weather conditions and locations that can be used. A conflict in our customer’s routing and policies caused us to keep their pet overnight in Philadelphia at a local pet hotel.

Our customer care team has been in regular communication with Ms. Dalton, and our team safely transported her pet to RDU this morning. We know it’s frustrating when our customers’ travel doesn’t go as planned and apologize for the inconvenience. Safety of all our customers is our top priority. More information on our pet travel policies can be found online.

In another incident last year, an airline mixup resulted in a family dog ending up in Japan instead of Kansas City. Irgo, a 10-year-old German Shepard, was sent to Japan, while another dog who was to reach the Asian country arrived in Kansas City. When Irgo's owners arrived to pick him up at the United Airlines counter, they found a Great Dane instead.