‘He was barking, how could she not have known?’: Woman whose dog died on United Airlines flight speaks of anguish

'I put him on the floor and I was hitting him, asking him to wake up, but he was already completely dead,' Catalina Robledo says

Fallout from the death of a French bulldog named Kokito continued for United Airlines on Thursday, as the airline explained how the dog had come to die in an overhead compartment and a US senator introduced a bill to stop such a thing from ever happening again.

United Airline’s admission followed an uproar over the Monday death of Kokito, who was placed in the overhead bin shortly before a flight left Houston for New York.

Maggie Schmerin, a spokeswoman for United Airlines, said the company had spoken to the family, the flight crew and passengers who had been seated nearby. The flight attendant who placed the carrier in the overhead bin said she had not heard the owner tell her that the dog was in the carrier, Ms Schmerin said. A witness and the owner said the dog had been barking before takeoff.

“As we stated, we take full responsibility and are deeply sorry for this tragic accident,” Ms Schmerin said. “We remain in contact with the family to express our condolences and offer support.”

Senator John Kennedy and senator Catherine Cortez Masto, introduced a bill on Thursday to prohibit airlines from storing animals in overhead compartments. The bill is called Welfare of Our Furry Friends Act or WOOFF.

Meanwhile, the Harris County district attorney’s office, in Texas, told a local news outlet that its animal cruelty task force would conduct an investigation into the death. If there was one cause that Americans could unite behind, it was justice for Kokito.

Putting animals in the overhead compartment was already against United Airline’s policies. But the airline said that in April it would start issuing brightly coloured bag tags to customers travelling with in-cabin pets, in order to prevent animal deaths in the future.

In an interview with Telemundo on Tuesday, the dog’s owner, Catalina Robledo, said that she had warned airline employees the dog would be in danger in the overhead bin, but that they insisted on putting the carrier there.

“I asked them, ‘how am I going to put my puppy in the overhead?’” she said. “He’s going to suffocate.”

She found his body when the flight was over.

“I put him on the floor and I was hitting him, asking him to wake up, but he was already completely dead,” she said, adding that the crying flight attendant had said she did not know the dog was in the bag.

“He was barking, how could she not have known?” Ms Robledo said

French bulldogs, an in demand breed for many dog owners in the last decade, often develop respiratory problems, partly because of the way their faces are shaped and are prone to heart defects and other diseases.

United Airlines has suffered a string of bad press since last year, when a passenger was dragged off an overbooked flight at a Chicago airport. More recently, its treatment of pets has come under scrutiny. Just this week, it apologised for having mistakenly sent a German shepherd to Japan.

The New York Times