‘Doesn’t sound optimal’: Virgin’s pet trial makes air travel a ‘lottery’

By Virgin Australia allowing cats and dogs in the cabin, air travel will like a lottery, where unlucky losers will be stuck next to someone else’s companion, writes Tim Blair.

Air travel used to be a luxury. Now it’s becoming a lottery – with unlucky losers set to be stuck in the sky alongside canine or feline travel companions.

Virgin Australia will soon begin trial flights between Sydney and Melbourne that will accommodate dogs and cats in the main cabin.

This doesn’t sound optimal. This sounds like visiting a relative who excessively indulges her indoor pets, but with worse food options and penalties for additional luggage.

According to reports, Virgin plans a “staged approach” to its airborne domestic animal proximity enclosures, initially allowing only “small dogs and cats in carriers on selected Melbourne-Sydney and Sydney-Melbourne flights before adding other routes”.

Unlucky travellers will be stuck next to other people’s pets thanks to Virgin’s trial.

That line about keeping pooches and pussies in carriers is obviously intended to calm the likes of me, who’d basically prefer human or human-like company during flights.

As The Australian observed: “Only dogs and cats that could travel in a carrier able to fit under the seat in front would be permitted to travel with their owners.”

You know, this carrier strategy might not be the deal-sealer that Virgin bosses imagine it to be.

For a start, even docile dogs get a little antsy when confined in uncomfortable spaces. If I wanted to share time with language-inhibited, tick-carrying things that growl, bark and snap, I’d watch the ABC.

There’s also the slightly concerning issue of what might define “fit” in terms of dogs, cats and their carriers.

Does anybody really want to endure an entire interstate flight sat next to a 25-kilogram Staffie that’s stuffed into a 15-kilo space?