Belen Aldecosea, 21, is suing Spirit Airlines for emotional distress because they told her she couldn’t board one of their flights with her medically certified emotional support pet dwarf hamster Pebbles.
The Wilson College student is claiming that she didn’t have any other choice but to kill Pebbles so she wouldn’t miss her flight home to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The flight staff at Baltimore-Washington International Airport informed her that rodents weren’t permitted on board, so she flushed him down the toilet. Aldecosea is alleging that she drowned her hamster at the suggestion of a Spirit employee. Spirit denies this.
Daily Mail“She was scared. I was scared. It was horrifying trying to put her in the toilet,” Aldecosea told the Miami Herald. “I was emotional. I was crying. I sat there for a good 10 minutes crying in the stall.”
Aldecosea said she called Spirit twice before her flight from Baltimore to Fort Lauderdale confirming that it was okay for her to bring her hamster on the flight. Both time Spirit confirmed that it was okay.
The college student was in a panic to get home for a medical issue. She couldn’t miss her flight. Aldecosea tried multiple times to get Pebbles back to her school safely. She tried to rent a car but none were available, taking a bus ride to Florida was out of the question to due her medical issue and none of her friends could come pick him up in time because their college was hours away.
That’s when a Spirit employee allegedly told her she’d either have to set Pebbles free and have him freeze or starve to death, or flush him down the toilet. “To be clear, at no point did any of our agents suggest this guest (or any other for that matter) should flush or otherwise injure an animal,” Spirit spokesman Derek Dombrowski said.
Spirit did acknowledge that they falsely told Aldecosea that her small hamster was safe to fly on two occasions. Despite Spirits own guidelines the US Transportation Safety Administration allows carry-on hamsters.
Aldecosea is now suing the airline for emotional distress.
