Need vs. Need

By now, we've heard this story a few times...about a passenger who got on a Southwest Airlines plane in Baltimore, and then, noticing a service dog aboard, set off a commotion that led to her being dragged off the plane by police, which led to everyone else on the plane whipping out their cells and taking videos of the pandemonium.

Unlike everyone else who has a lot to say about it, I'm not taking a side, because I don't know any more than what I see on TV and read in the paper.

The woman is a Maryland Institute College of Art professor, Anila  Daulatzai by name.  She's 46 and claims she is deathly allergic to dogs. 

That may be so.  But people with that condition are supposed to have medical verification they can show as proof.

Southwest Airlines says that without that medical certificate, a passenger may be denied boarding.  After all, from their side of the matter, they have to take whatever steps to make sure that a possible bad outcome might unfold, especially when they are forewarned about it. 

But in Ms Daulatzai's case, they say she was given an explanation and still refused to leave the plane, and that's when and why law enforcement was brought in to remove her from the plane.

"My dad has a surgery! What are you doing?" Daulatzai responded. "I will walk off! Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! You have ripped my pants off," is what she was saying as she was taken away.

I'm just guessing here, but maybe she was on the plane because her father was scheduled to have an operation, and she wanted to be there with him, and that was weighing heavily on her mind as she sat and waited for the plane to take off (which is plenty of stress to begin with) and then she sees a dog and that sets off another whole set of stressors...

Again. We don't know what being in an enclosed space with a canine would do to this woman. We don't know anything, except that every day we get another reminder of how much anxiety there is in every life.


I'm hoping she got to be with her father, that all is well with him, and with her. And also, I hope that anyone who needs a service animal has access to one, and that anyone who cannot be around an service animal carries certification of that fact. 

Everything will work out if we do what we need to do.