Plucky The Parrot Grounded: Frontier Airlines Refused Return Flight For Emotional Support Bird

Her first airplane trip in six years did not go as planned after Maria Fraterrigo was told by Frontier Airlines that she could return to New York City, but not her emotional support parrot, despite having no issues on the outbound flight with her pet bird.

Frontier Airlines Is For The Birds: Budget Carrier Backs Down, Lets Emotional Support Parrot Fly Home to NYC

For years, Fraterrigo and her husband made an annual pilgrimage to Puerto Rico to visit friends and family. In 2019, she lost her husband and has not traveled since then, but her son talked into her into it.

So this year, 81-year-old Fraterrigo flew to San Juan (SJU) with her African gray parrot, Plucky, on her shoulder.

Her son Robert had used the online chat feature to confirm with Frontier Airlines the bird would be allowed onboard. A chat transcript revealed that an agent had said there would be on trouble traveling with her emotional support bird as long as he brought a doctor’s note (“Okay that’s awesome. That is all she needs to bring and show to the airport.”)

On January 4, Fraterrigo and Plucky flew to San Juan with no issues.

But three months later, the return did not go quite so smoothly.

As Robert shares, “They started yelling and screaming at my mom and saying, ‘You’re not getting on board with the bird. You want to get on the plane, leave the bird behind.’”

That’s actually what she should have been told from the start. Frontier stopped transporting “emotional support animals” in 2020 and has a clear exclusion for parrots on its website:

• A few things to know about traveling with pets in the cabin:

  • Domesticated dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, or small household birds may be carried on flights within the United States.
  • The following species are never accepted: Large birds (e.g. parrots, macaws, cockatoos, birds of prey), rodents (including mice, rats, squirrels), beavers, ferrets, reptiles (including snakes), amphibians, spiders, and insects (and please, no lions, tigers, or bears).

With Frontier seemingly refusing to budge, Robert looked into private jet options:

“It’s an island — can’t go drive there and pick her up. There was no boats that were going to take her back. None of the major airlines would take her back. Our last resort was a private jet, and that’s not cheap. That’s not cheap at all. And my mom was not leaving the island without that bird.”

But after intense media pressure and direct intervention from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D – NY) this week, Frontier relented and allowed Fraterrigo to return home with Plucky. That strikes me as reasonable, but only because it transported Plucky on the outbound journey.

CONCLUSION

One of my real viral stories on Live and Let’s Fly was a story about an emotional support peacock…while airlines are no longer compelled to require emotional support animals onboard, Frontier allowed Plucky onboard for the outbound journey and it strikes me as reasonable that Plucky be allowed back.

As for the general madness over emotional support birds on airplanes…well, we have bigger birds to pluck these days.

Start spreading the plumes news, we’re leaving today…