While there are a lot of reasons that someone could be uneasy about air travel, the odd truth is that I’ve always found myself worrying more about seeing my luggage at my destination than actually making it there myself.
Because while there are so many airline employees who are committed to making the transportation process run as smoothly as possible, we are talking about a pretty complicated system run by people and computers that are always capable of making mistakes.
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But while it’s definitely a rough situation to set out for a vacation only to learn that the airline has lost the things you need for it, that anxiety runs even deeper when they have no idea where the lives you entrusted with them are.
And that’s the scary situation that one woman recently had to face.
Over the past four days, TikTok user Ariel Dale has been documenting the obstacles she’s dealt with in moving from Los Angeles to New York.
And as she explained in a video , she spent weeks trying to figure out how her two rescue cats would be able to travel that distance.
Complicating matters was the fact that her pets couldn’t join her on her Delta flight. But after realizing that they’d be stressed for days if she drove and freaked out by others if they were on a passenger flight, she decided that her best option was to put them on a cargo flight through American Airlines.
However, it seemed that luck simply wasn’t on her cats’ side at any point during their voyage.
After being given the wrong drop-off point for her cats and almost missing her own flight, Dale discovered shortly after boarding that her cats’ flight was initially delayed and then outright cancelled.
While this was stressful for her, she was later told that the pets were booked for another flight and were being well-cared for.
Unfortunately, this would only mean that Dale would be blindsided once she arrived to pick up her cats.
Because when she told an employee at the terminal why she was there, he seemed confused and replied that they didn’t have any cats there.
In her words, “I just dropped to the floor and I started crying because it was too much.”
And for the next two hours, the situation would seem about as bleak because this man kept calling other employees only to be told that they didn’t know where the cats were either.
At this point, Dale feared the worst and was losing hope that her cats were even still alive.
But after an additional hour, it seems this employee was able to track down the cats and bring them out to Dale. She confirmed that while they were clearly scared, they both survived.
Insider has reported that American Airlines confirmed that Dale and her cats were reunited, but Dale says they have not contacted her after the incident with either an explanation or an apology.
However, it at least sounds like the cats are acclimating to their new home well.
