A ‘big fat’ cat managed to escape her owner on a recent Delta Air Lines flight and decided that First Class was a far more appropriate place for her ‘spoiled ass,’ according to another passenger who caught the hilarious moment in a now viral TikTok video.
Now viewed more than 760,000 times, Nalah Symone explains in her video how the cat bolted for the plush surroundings of the First Class cabin just after the late-night flight from Las Vegas to Atlanta had taken off.
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The cat had been with her owner way in the back of the aircraft, but managed to escape and then strolled up towards First Class, where she know she belong.”
Once there, the cat then stretched out under some seats and refused to budge as two flight attendants valiantly tried to coax her out.
“They’ve been negotiating and begging this cat to come out, and she’s like, ‘I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not sitting back there,'” Nalah jokingly narrated her video.
Eventually, though, the flight attendants did coax the trespassing cat out from under the seats and then carried her out down the aisle. Suffice to say, the cat did not look impressed with her removal back to Economy Class.
“Look at the judgment,” Nalah said of the cat’s expression as she was being carried down the aisle. “She’s judging us, like, ‘Ew, broke!'”
Even Delta’s social media team saw the funny side of the situation, replying to Nalah with the tongue-in-cheek response: “An upgraded seat? don’t mind if I do.”
On domestic flights, Delta allows passengers to travel with their pet cats, household birds, and small dogs for a fee – in fact, in April, Delta hiked the cost of traveling with a pet in the cabin by nearly 60%, raising the fee from $95 to $150.
Delta tells passengers that pets must be kept in a secure kennel or pet carrier for the duration of the flight, although this isn’t the first time that something has clearly gone wrong and the pet has been able to escape.
While Delta does allow in-cabin pets, the airline has a deliberately small list of permitted animals allowed in the cabin – a reaction to the rise in Emotional Support Animals.
In 2021, Delta banned Emotional Support Animals onboard its flights following a near 85% increase in animal incidents on its aircraft since 2016. The airline had lobbied hard for a change in the rules, fearing that some passengers were abusing the regulations to travel for free with animals that weren’t suitable to be brought in an airplane cabin.
The airline must, however, still allow properly trained service animals to travel in the cabin without being in a kennel or pet carrier.
