A EUROPEAN court has ruled that a dog which escaped and was never seen again while being loaded onto an Iberia flight should be treated the same as lost luggage.
The pet, Mona, bolted from her cage on the runway at Buenos Aires airport on October 22, 2019, as ground staff prepared to load her onto a flight bound for Barcelona.
Three airport vans chased her in vain across the tarmac, but she vanished without a trace beyond the airport perimeter.
The owner, Argentinian passenger Grisel Ortiz, was travelling with her mother and had entrusted the dog to the airline because she weighed more than eight kilos and was not allowed in the cabin.
From the terminal window, Ortiz could only watch as her pet disappeared into the wild.
She launched an online campaign to find Mona, setting up a Facebook page and offering a cash reward, but months of searching brought nothing.
Ortiz kept posting for years on the page, called Buscamos a Mona, thanking strangers who helped her search and pleading for information.
“We still have faith and infinite love that keeps us fighting to the end, even if the years pass,” she wrote. “Maybe some think it’s over, but we will never stop looking for her.”
In another message she insisted Mona was still alive and ‘with someone in a nearby house’, adding, ‘they know she has another family and they are not at peace. One day someone will tell me, ‘I saw Mona, she’s there.’’
Ortiz later sued Iberia for €5,000 in moral damages, saying she had suffered deeply from the loss.
The airline actually accepted responsibility for the loss, but was only willing to pay out limited compensation under international baggage rules.
It contested the €5,000 Ortiz claimed for emotional distress, and a court clash loomed.
The airline argued that because Mona was checked into the hold without a ‘special declaration of value’, she counted as ordinary luggage under the Montreal Convention.
This week – a full six years after Mona’s disappearance – the Court of Justice of the European Union reached its verdict, and agreed with Iberia.
READ MORE: Spain wants EU to stop twice-yearly clock changes because it ‘no longer makes sense’
It ruled that animals travelling in an aircraft’s hold can be classed as ordinary baggage under the Montreal Convention.
It means airlines are only liable for the same compensation as they would pay for a lost suitcase.
The court said: “The fact that the protection of animal welfare is an objective of general interest recognised by the European Union does not prevent animals from being transported as ‘baggage’ and considered as such for the purposes of liability arising from loss.”
Ortiz’s lawyer said she hoped Spanish judges ‘will be more sensitive to the new realities of our society’, arguing that losing a pet causes ‘not only moral but also psychological and even psychiatric damage’ which current laws fail to recognise.
Under Spanish civil law, pets are defined as ‘sentient beings’, but that status does not yet extend to air travel.
Click here to read more Barcelona News from The Olive Press.
