A 21 year-old Australian woman, Danielle Di Fiore moved to “London in March with her boyfriend and best friends, two year-old Indian ringneck parrots Kakota and Elvis“.
She paid Qantas a huge sum of money to get her birds to London, but one didn’t arrive in good health, dying of hypothermia soon after.
Di Fiore has been looking for answers about how her bird could’ve froze to death during the journey but Qantas isn’t cooperating.
Qantas is being accused of not taking responsibility for what happened to the bird. Di Fiore has even set up a fundraiser to get the money together to sue Qantas. The situation has dragged on for four months.
According to the New York Post, Di Fiore “spent six months researching how best to take her “babies” with her but when the birds arrived in London on March 10 in separate crates, Elvis was fine but Kakota was “barely alive with hypothermia.”
Kakota’s crate had overflown with water and a report from the Heathrow Animal Reception Center stated that the bird was in very poor condition when it arrived.
The airline and Skypets, the animal transport company both have not taken any responsibility or refunded any of Di Fiore’s expenses.
A Skypets spokesperson says the bird’s death is not their fault and they won’t be giving any sort of refund.
A third part is being blamed for the unfortunate fate of Kakota- the ground handling staff at Dubai airport.
Qantas has said that they will be reaching out to Di Fiore although the airline did also say that, “customers are informed at the time of booking that animals can react differently to flying on board an aircraft particularly on a long journey from Australia to the UK and everything is done to ensure animals are transported safely and comfortably… The cargo hold was heated appropriately and the parrot was found to be in good health during the transit in Dubai.”
The Skypets rep said that no one has done anything wrong and small birds flying on long-haul flights is quite risky. The rep said that Di Fiore was informed of this.
After reading all of the details, it does seem hard to place blame. However, Skypets mentions that the bird’s crate ended up on its side during the flight. I’m guessing this caused the crate to fill with water. You have to wonder why the crate wasn’t secured so it couldn’t fall over. Someone’s got to be held accountable for that, if that is the reason for the bird freezing during the journey.
Find out more from the New York Post here.
