Pets Fly Coach on Pet Airways

RUSH: There was a story while I was gone — I have it here in the stack — there’s an airline operating out of Baltimore, Thurgood Marshall, Baltimore Washington International, Brown vs. Board of Education airport. (laughing) See if I can say that again. Thurgood Marshall Baltimore Washington International Brown vs. Board of Education airport. (laughing) There is an airline that’s going to fly pets. It’s a pet airline. You put your pet in a cage, and they put it in a seat on the airplane, or at least in the passenger cabin, not in cargo. I don’t know if people also go or if it’s just pets. I didn’t read the story. Came out July 7th or some such thing. For $149 bucks you can fly your pet to California, the route system was published in the story.

I looked at this and said, ‘In the middle of a recession?’ Yes, there’s a demand for it. People today don’t want their dogs flying in cargo. I remember when I moved to New York from Sacramento — I’m sorry for all this nostalgia, folks, but I remember when I moved to New York from Sacramento, I had a couple of Cairn Terriers, that’s Toto on the Wizard of Oz. That’s a Cairn Terrier. It’s a black version of the West Highland White Terrier. Mighty strong little dogs. It came time to move ’em so I call up Delta Dash, Delta Air Lines, the Dash system, they put the dogs in these little cages, put them in cargo, and fly them and pick ’em up. I remember taking a car service to LaGuardia, to Delta Dash to pick up the dogs, and I had an animal rights wacko as a driver who was telling me something he had watched on television, had to be PBS back then because there wasn’t an Animal Planet channel, and he was talking about these evil people killing the whales. And he said this particular story, the show that he watched, got a close-up of the whale’s eyes as people moved in to save the whales from the evils that were trying to wipe ’em out, and the whales knew, you could see in their eyes, the whales knew who their friends were.

He was just excited as hell, I was picking up the dogs and so forth, you know, here they come, a cargo baggage carousel, here come the dogs and you get them out of the cage and take them in the car, head home and that’s it. Today that’s cruel. ‘I’m not going to put my dog in cargo, who do you think I am? I might get sued, ASPCA might find out about it.’ So an airline has been born in the middle of a recession to fly pets around, $149 bucks. Is this a great country or what? Meanwhile, there are people in this country, nine-and-a-half percent unemployment, who can’t afford a cab!