An American family was left distraught after an airline mistakenly sent their pet dog to Saudi Arabia instead of Nashville, Tennessee in the US. Bluebell, a five-year-old rescue dog, ended up halfway across the world because of a rather shocking error on part of British Airways.
The dog had been adopted by a family in London that was relocating back to Tennessee. But when the family arrived at Nashville International Airport to reunite with her, they were stunned to discover that the airline presented them with a completely different dog.
“They said she wasn’t in Nashville, and they said their best guess was she was in Saudi Arabia,” Bluebell’s owner Madison Miller told WSMV.
About an hour later, the Millers were shown a photograph of their dog locked in a crate in Saudi Arabia. “After we knew she was in Saudi Arabia, it was just all hands on deck. How do we get her back?” said Madison Miller.
It took three days and three flights for Bluebell to be reunited with her family, but the Millers say she is still displaying signs of stress from the ordeal.
“I anticipated kind of like the reunion you see on YouTube,” Miller said. “Like she comes out of the crate, she’s wagging and licking your face. It was the opposite.”
Once out of her crate, Bluebell bolted to escape. She had to be grabbed so she wouldn’t run away. Her problems continued in her new home, where she often sits alone and cries, the Millers say.
British Airways forwarded a request for comment to a cargo company, IAG Cargo, that apologised for the mix-up.
“We take the responsibility of caring for people’s loved animals seriously and are investigating how the redirection happened,” the cargo company said, adding that the dog was put on the first flight back to Tennessee once the mix-up was discovered.
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