Autism Service Dogs

Glindy and I flew to Los Angeles last week for the Doctor Who convention in Los Angeles. We flew on Horizon Air, which operates a number of smaller, regional jets; this fact is somewhat relevant to the description of accommodative seating which follows.

First of all, I called ahead--almost a week ahead, in fact--to request accommodative seating. The ACAA requires at least 24 hours notice, so I made sure to call right after buying the tickets. It's worth noting that this ended up having no impact on the accommodative seating I eventually received, so based on a statistical sampling of one, I'd say that this advanced notice requirement is a necessary step, but not to be relied upon.

The ticketing agents were all very polite, and simply asked if Glindy was my service dog. After that, they started to issue a boarding pass, but did not bring up seating with me. When I reminded them that I needed accommodative seating, they were willing but confused.

First, it turns out that the planes Horizon Air operates in my market do not have any bulkhead seating. All bulkhead seats are emergency exit seats, and 14 CFR 382.55(2) states that service animals may not block aisles or evacuation areas. So, even though I'm physically capable of handling emergency exit activities, neither Glindy nor I are allowed to sit in those rows when we are together.

I requested instead that they block off the seat next to me, so that Glindy would be able to lie at my feet without getting stepped on. The ticketing agents were more than willing to do this on the trip from Reno to Los Angeles (more on the return segment later).

However, when I got to the gate, the gate agents wouldn't acknowledge the new seat assignments. They kept insisting that they needed to wait for all the passengers to check in before they could ask for volunteers to move seats. Legally this isn't the case, but it didn't seem worth arguing about so long as I got what I needed. In the end, it didn't cause us any trouble, but this may be something I need to watch for on future flights.

We did "pre-board," but despite telling them we needed a bit of extra time, they essentially called pre-boarding about ten seconds before general boarding, so we were definitely a bit rushed. This was handled better on the return trip (again, more on that later).

The Horizon Air seat layout is two seats on either side of the aisle, with no middle support bar blocking the space under the seats in front. This was something I had never considered, but turned out to be a real benefit, as it afforded significantly more floor space for Glindy and me.

I guided Glindy into position first, and then sat in the aisle seat. She tried to climb up into the window seat, and had to be encouraged to sit on the floor instead. Later in the flight, Glindy would manage to sprawl out with most of her body under the seats in front of us (something she couldn't have done with a middle support bar), but for take-off I just needed to ensure that she was sitting or laying down out of the aisle.

She was a little nervous at take-off, but was reasonably well-composed throughout the majority of the flight. The only exceptions were my trip to the lavatory, and the final landing.

During my trip to the lavatory, I used an extra collar, a double-ended metal clip, and the seat belt next to me to restrain her while I got up. I buckled the window seat, let it out to its full extension, and then buckled the spare collar around the seat belt, forming a long double loop with a D-ring attachment point. Then I used the metal clip to connect the D-ring of the collar to the D-ring on her harness to ensure she was properly restrained.

I was told by other passengers that she was well-behaved while I was up, but that she never took her eyes off the lavatory door. I was pleased by her patience and calmness, and gave her a lot of petting when I returned to my seat.

She did panic a bit on the landing, but that was largely my fault. She was lying on the floor during the descent, and I didn't want to get her riled up since she seemed so calm. However, when the plane hit the ground for a bumpy landing, she panicked, and tried to run out into the aisle. It took a few minutes to calm her down, and I felt guilty for not taking better steps to prepare her for the landing. I handled things differently on the return flight, naturally.

Overall, it was a great success. I learned some useful things, and we had surprisingly few problems for our maiden voyage together.