When pugs fly: Three cheers for Naresh Goyal's wife Anita

Really, what is the point of having a husband who owns one of the country’s largest airlines, if you can’t take your pet on board? It’s like being married to a plastic surgeon and not being bumped up the nose job priority list. This is India. Rules are meant to be broken. A little nepotism is only par for the course.

Compared to getting a steel mine or two this is really chicken feed.

Anita Goyal, airline magnate Naresh Goyal’s wife was detained at Mumbai airport and fined Rs 36,000 for flying on a Jet Airways flight with her pug in the cabin. Pets are not allowed to fly in the cabin with passengers unless they’re service animals accompanying a disabled person, or “unless the passenger is transferring residence from another country to India”.

Now I have various bones of contention with this detention of Mrs Goyal (and no, I am not affiliated with Jet in any manner and my frequent flyer card has long expired). But I feel that I must stand up for her rights to travel with her pet. First off, we all know (or so I hope) that Mrs Goyal is not in need of a seeing eye pug. But the business about carrying pets only when shifting residence is simply put, a rubbish rule. Because I can claim I’m shifting residence from Bangkok to India, get a license to travel with my pet, come visit for a month and return. Ill-thought out rules like this are meant to be broken.

[caption id=“attachment_871091” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] No room for dogs? Reuters[/caption]

Leaving aside the nonsense rule, what is the logic of not allowing dogs to travel in the cabin with their owners? A flight from London is 8 hours long at least. What kind of monster would put a dog into a hold for 8 hours? Also this isn’t a rottweiller. This is a pug, which can fit into a good-sized handbag. Given a choice between a loud, whiney badly behaved child and a quiet little dog as a co-passenger, I know I’d opt for the dog. Also, nowhere is it mentioned that any co-passenger complained about the dog. I’ve been on flights where I’ve been cringing because either a child pukes next to me or screams in my ear or some drunken sod who can’t believe his luck that there’s an open bar starts tossing them down like an escapee from Alcoholics Anonymous. A teeny weeny dog which doesn’t make a sound is a way better co-passenger. Until badly behaved co-passengers and enfants terribles aren’t made to travel in the hold, there’s no reason why dogs should be. At least they don’t run around creating havoc.

Also, do you really blame Anita Goyal for carrying her pug in the cabin with her, keeping in mind Jet’s track record with transporting pugs? Two years back, Jet Airways had to pay Rs 1.4 lakh for basically snuffing out the lives of two perfectly healthy pugs who were travelling in their hold. Jimmy and Bantu died of suffocation-induced acute respiratory failure from oxygen deficiency. Why did this happen? Because the uber-smart pilots forgot to maintain adequate pressure in the hold. Mrs Goyal, it seems, trusts Jet Airways’ ability to keep a pet alive as much as the rest of us dog-lovers do. And while it seems that pugs are as unlucky for Jet Airways as they are lucky for Vodafone, my vote goes to Anita Goyal. More power to her. “Have dog, will fly first class” should be every dog lover’s motto. I know if I was married to an airline tycoon, I’d be jetting all over the world with dogs sitting in the seats next to me. And I’d throw all smelly, loud passengers, especially badly behaved children, off the flight.

However I think it’s quite commendable that Jet Airways allowed Mrs Goyal to be detained and didn’t do the usual Indian jugaad of popping her pug into a basket as she deplaned and pretending the pug had been in the cargo all along. Honesty is obviously an expensive policy. She supposedly had to shell out “a total amount of Rs 36,200. The value of the dog was Rs 45,000 on which a duty of Rs 16,200 (36%) was charged. She paid a fine of Rs 12,000 and a penalty of Rs 8,000”.

But that’s probably still cheaper than chartering a flight for herself which she could easily have done. It’s even cheaper than a first class ticket for the pug. In this day of flashy yachts and Goa mansions, this show of economic restraint must not go unacknowledged. I hope the pug got a mimosa and pate on the flight.