United Airlines Killed Our Golden Retriever, Bea

wow. Very sorry for your loss!

When we moved cross country to California, my wife and I were so scared of this happening to our pup that we opted to drive for 4 days rather than risk it.

Me, and a lot of people I know would be willing to pay at least as much as a ticket for a person costs to have our pets transported safely by air, preferably in the cabin instead of as luggage. It doesn't have to be with us, although I would love it if that was possible.

A company called petairways used to do this, but has recently gone bankrupt. I wonder if there is a viable way to make this work.

I've never flown with a pet, but I can't imagine the heartache from arriving at your destination to find one of your pets has died.

It sounds like the owners did everything reasonable to prepare for the flight.

When it comes to finding United responsible, maybe travel crate companies should equip the crates with temperature sensors, so that an owner could see the conditions the pets underwent through a flight.

Owners of other pets on the flight could have seen how hot it got in the compartment, and realized what kind of peril their animals were in as well.

Total non-sequitur but this thread has 20 points and 5 comments in 36 minutes, posted by a 5k+ karma user... and it's buried at the bottom of the second page? How'd that happen?

I've seen posts with 3 or 4 up votes in an hour make it to the front page.

Well... I'm really sorry about the loss, but I can't really see where it's United's fault that the dog died.. Travelling IS stress, always, but there is absolutely no proof that United is to blame. (Except for the very very bad reaction at the airport)