What Should You Do if a Flight Attendant Tells You to Put Your Dog in an Overhead Bin?
What Should You Do if a Flight Attendant Tells You to Put Your Dog in an Overhead Bin?
A guide to arguing on an airplane when you know you’re in the right.
By JEFF FRIEDRICH
First of all, consider the complexities of Robledo’s situation: Reporting has indicated that she does not speak English fluently, and she was traveling alone with an 11-year-old, a newborn, and her dog.
But even holding those challenges aside, much of the second-guessing presupposes that you can get what you want on an airplane using the same tactics you’d deploy to resolve a dispute with Amazon, Walmart, or Olive Garden. This expectation makes sense, because outwardly the airlines greet you with a smile and emphasize a similar commitment to customer service. But complaining on an airplane is fundamentally different, because the inside of a cabin is ultimately governed by a set of inflexible laws that prioritize safety and anticipate worst-case scenario disasters. Most of the time these regulations are just background noise, but at the heart of most passenger horror stories lies some rule that transformed an ordinary service interaction into something more akin to a police stop. These dynamics are the special sauce that makes airplanes uniquely terrible venues for conflict mediation.
So what should you do if you need to win an argument on a plane, as if your dog’s life were on the line? As a former flight attendant, here’s the advice I’d offer.
Speak Up, but Beware the Limits of Speaking Up
But you should still speak up—as Robledo did. The key is to remain calm and to avoid monopolizing the flight attendant’s attention. “You’re allowed to disagree with flight crew,” says Justin T. Green, a partner at Kreindler, a large plaintiff-side aviation law firm, “but you must do so without interfering with the flight crew’s duties.”
https://slate.com/business/2018/03/what-you-should-do-if-a-flight-attendant-tells-you-to-put-your-dog-in-an-overhead-bin.html
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My dog wasn't all that big - a Cairn Terrier (like Toto) - but it sounded like he would be too large and that discouraged me from taking him with me on a plane. 
