At the Bogota airport, as passengers were placing their carry-ons, laptops and purses in bins inching their way on the conveyer belt for inspection, one item stood out: it was a cat, and its owner was putting it into a cabin-ready case.
For most travelers, this would hardly be noticeable. Yet for me, alarm bells rang. I am severely allergic to cats, vulnerable to allergic asthma, and a cat was going be sharing my cabin during the six-hour Air Canada flight.
A 2010 editorial in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association was an answered prayer for cat allergic fliers: it asserted that "people with allergies should be able to fly without placing their health at risk and must not be prevented from traveling for fear of being confined close to a pet."
Two years later, the Canadian Transportation Agency, responding to complaints from three cat allergic passengers, stated that that airlines should either stop allowing cats in cabins or create a five-row buffer zone.
"This issue was on the radar in 2012-2014," notes Jenna Reynolds, CEO of Asthma Canada, which is partners with the American Asthma and Allergy Network. But by 2021, it had faded. "Now the buffer zone is one row," says Reynolds.
- And the problem for cat allergics may well get worse.
The US cat population is expected to grow from 65 million in 2020 to 82 million in 2030 -- even more than the dog population, according to the American Veterinary Medicine Association.
Since cat allergy is the most widespread of all pet allergies, this will likely translate into more sneezing and wheezing. Will a critical mass of cat-allergic passengers organize? Will the airlines take note as more and more passengers ask to be moved away from the dander-spreading felines?