Airline leaves dog on runway in the rain

Picture of soaking animal sparks outrage across social media

United Airlines has earned the ire of animal lovers the world over after a picture was tweeted of a dog stranded on a runway in the pouring rain.

Evil United Airlines leaves dog on rainy cold runway for more than a half hour despite alerts to staff :-((((( boo pic.twitter.com/xcwVOxIpV9
— barbara (@theregoesbabs) December 28, 2014

Twitter user @theregoesbabs claimed that she sat on her plane and looked on as the animal was left in its carrier on the wet runway for over half an hour, despite staff having been alerted. The picture has since been retweeted over a thousand times.
United Airlines responded quickly and shifted blame for the overlooked pooch onto its (apparently erroneously named) PetSafe program, which is responsible for airport-to-airport delivery of animals.

@theregoesbabs Thanks for telling us. The weather can change & may have been clear when PetSafe dropped off. They’re the ones to call too.
— United (@united) December 28, 2014

It’s unclear how quickly the situation was resolved, but it wasn’t long before Australian pop singer Sia got involved to declare that she will be boycotting the airline in future.

I will never fly @United again. Thanks @theregoesbabs for exposing their shitty treatment of our beloved pets.
— sia (@Sia) December 29, 2014

The singer’s retweet of the picture received over four thousand retweets by itself. We hope the dog made it back safely to its owner and is currently curled up in front of a fire dreaming about sausages. Or whatever dogs dream about.