There is nothing like leaning back into your plane seat several hours into a flight and feeling something furry rustling against your bare arm because it is summer and you're wearing a sleeveless shirt.
This recently happened to me on an Air Canada (ACDVF) flight between Newark and Vancouver where what I thought was a seat neighbor's travel bag turned out to be a pet carrier holding an orange-gray tabby cat that she took out when the flight attendants had passed with drinks service.
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While both U.S.-based and Canadian airlines currently allow bringing pets under a certain size with you into the cabin, the key condition is that they must stay in the carrier the entire time.
A pet on your lap? That is definitely against policy
Air Canada frames it as the carrier being "big enough to allow [the pet] to stand up, turn around and lie down safely and comfortably, with no part of them extending outside the carrier" while Delta Air Lines (DAL) writes that you must "keep your pet in the kennel at all times." In both cases, that means taking anyone other than a service dog out into the seat an absolute no-no.
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Fortunately, this particular cat was very well behaved and sat in the traveler's lap looking out into the setting sun without causing any issues. I asked to pet it (there is something about seeing furry pets just brings out that human "have to cuddle it" instinct) and sat smiling quietly at the passenger's audacity before a flight attendant making the rounds passed through and did the same double-take that I did when the pet first came out.
Veronika Bondarenko
Well- vs. badly-behaved pets and a matter of policy
The gig was up and the passenger was very sternly told that her pet must be in the carrier at all times during the flight. She replied by saying that she was bringing the cat out to feed it — an obvious fib since she kept it on her lap for at least 30 minutes during the flight and then kept it there for a little while longer after the flight attendant had passed.
The thing about flying and pets is that all can go either very well or very badly. Some pets are better behaved than humans (the screaming baby on the same flight was the bigger disturbance) while others can sow chaos worthy of the best sitcom.
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I always think of the flight from Bangkok to Taiwan in which passengers climbed onto seats to get away from escaped otters, a marmoset, and 28 tortoises that someone was transporting in a crate.
Another incident was the Air New Zealand (ANZFF) flight in which passengers complained about a "drooling and farting" dog throughout the length of the 13-hour flight.
I wasn't going to snitch on someone who just wanted to sit with her pet but one-for-all policies are obviously necessary to prevent the ample problematic situations that can occur with unruly pets. And airlines have also been moving toward being more accommodating.
Last April, American Airlines (AAL) updated its policy to not count pet carriers as a personal item that would prevent them from also bringing on a carry-on without paying extra.
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