Italy blasted for 'ridiculous' new cabin rule on planes as passengers ask 'how is this okay?'
Italy has made a major rule change that's set to make air travel much more pet-friendly.
Large dogs - once confined to the plane's hold - will now be allowed to travel in the cabin alongside their owners.
Before the rule was introduced pets that weighed over 8-10kg had to be transported in the hold.
Italy's civil aviation authority ENAC said in a press release that the new rules would make it easier for a 'greater number of passengers to transport their pets by air'.
Matteo Salvini, transport minister and deputy PM, posted on social media: 'From now on dog and cat owners will have less difficulty flying with their four-legged friends. Promise kept!'
But while the news was celebrated by some holidaymakers, others were much less impressed by the new rule.
Posting on Instagram, one person said: 'I don't want to sit on a seat where a dirty dog was.'
Another said: 'Stupid really. Imagine a plane in distress, the pets will all go off. Seriously what a garbage idea, no safety involved.'
A third blasted: 'This is ridiculous. It does not take into consideration ideation people with phobias and allergies.
'Not everyone keeps their animals as clean as they should either. Guess who is going to get sued if a dog attacks another passenger?
'I love dogs but this is going to bite the airlines and some passengers in the bum. Yes pun intended!'
Someone else agreed: 'The dog can sit next to its owner but what if the person next to the owner is allergic or is afraid - how is this ok?'
But, while the rule change might sound attractive to animal owners, there are a few catches to the policy.
Airlines in Italy aren't required to change their policies to reflect the new rules.
Many still only allow service animals to fly in the cabin.
Animals are also required to be 'placed in approved carriers' which can be put on seats, providing they don't 'obstruct emergency exits or crew operations'.
The containers need to be secured with belts or 'specific anchoring systems'.
As the carriers need to be placed on the aircraft's seats, it might rule out any large dog owners from taking advantage of the policy.
It comes after British Airways banned cabin crew from posting on social media from their layover hotels, in a new policy.
Staff have also been asked to remove any existing photos taken at layover hotels from their social media accounts
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
The age of the distinguished, insightful travelogue is over – now it's all idiots abroad
Whether it's Joe Lycett knocking back Swedish firewater made of beaver glands in Channel 4's Travel Man: 48 Hours in...; Gino D'Acampo setting fire to his deodorant spray and skinny dipping ('look: free willy!') his way through Italy in ITV's Gordon, Gino and Fred: Road Trip; or Sue Perkins smirking while snacking on giant croissants and pan-fried crickets in Sue Perkins' Big Adventure: Paris to Istanbul (also Channel 4), you might have been struck by something about recent TV travel documentaries: namely, their lack of the je ne sais quoi that marked the heyday of travel-documentary oeuvre. The Seventies saw Alan Whicker hanging out with the Sultan of Brunei and the super-rich recluses of the South Pacific islands, all sardonic wit and (whatever the climate) his signature tailored suit. The Eighties and Nineties, of course, gave us the affable Michael Palin, bringing to life the architectural wonders of Timbuktu and the Tuareg caravan travellers of the Sahara Desert. In the 2010s we moseyed along the River Nile and the Trans-Siberian Railway from Russia to Mongolia and China with plummy national treasure Dame Joanna Lumley. Not a shot of snake's blood or gratuitous nude between them. Veteran American travel writer Rick Steves, 70, recently weighed in on the debate around the current crop of dumbed-down travel programming, noting that TV travel shows and YouTubers baiting clicks with 'grossout' foreign food and whizzing through world bucket lists are problematic for the destinations that are featured. Such programming, Steves argues, peddles the 'superficial aspects of travel and tourist traps' as it 'exaggerates a destination's potential dangers for comedic effect' ('don't drink the toilet water, guys – phnarr, phnarr!'). Seasoned travel head Noel Josephides, aged 77, chairman of tour operator Sunvil, also laments the loss of the golden days of linear television from the Seventies to Nineties, when travel shows were 'serious and their presenters were respected' by both the public and travel industry. 'I used to watch Michael Palin, Wish You Were Here…? on ITV, and the Holiday programme on BBC religiously, and if a destination was mentioned [Sunvil] could fill a whole season with bookings,' he recalls. These days, he notes, none of these things are true. 'Everything has been dumbed down and it's more about the presenter than the destination,' he complains. Former TV commissioner Gillian Crawley tells me that she believes 'celebs with no insight' should be removed from TV travel scheduling altogether, including actors such as Palin and Lumley and today's C-list crop. 'I used to wonder why I was sending someone from Corrie to Borneo to look at the orangutans because [the actor] was pretending to be an eco-warrior at the time,' she recalls. Instead, Crawley rates presenters with a depth of knowledge and a 'critical eye', such as Sir David Attenborough and Dame Mary Beard. 'Even Michael Portillo is better than some of the current crop,' she says of the politician turned rail presenter, 'as he at least does like trains.' She concludes: 'It doesn't matter whether someone is posh or not posh – they're just slebs with no special insight and they can pay for their own holidays.' However, Kylie Bawden, who has worked as a location arranger on shows including Ainsley's Caribbean Kitchen and Joe Lycett's Travel Man: 48hrs in Washington, DC disagrees with the idea that travel TV has been dumbed down. The more intimate onus of today's travel TV, she says, is as much down to social media and consumer demand as it is an erosion of standards. 'Viewers have access to celebrities via social media that was never possible in the Palin days,' she tells me. 'Today's audiences want something more light-hearted than before, but they also want to feel like there's a real possibility that they could replicate the experiences they are watching on TV. So, less crossing the Sahara desert in a camel caravan and more the best speakeasies in Washington or where to go to experience trad pub music in Ireland.' 'Parasociality', or the trend of viewers and listeners wanting to feel as if they are personal friends of the celebrities they follow, is – it seems – partly to blame. Bawden adds that destinations are often more than happy to roll the red carpet out for Lycett, Perkins et al with a view to the audience booking a holiday inspired by TV. 'Set-jetting [viewers travelling to destinations they have seen on TV] really drives bookings in the 2020s,' Bawden argues. Gavin Bate, director and mountain leader at tour company Adventure Alternative, corroborates this link between TV appearances and booking spikes: 'When the Comic Relief celebrity team climbed Kilimanjaro and the BBC aired the programme on a Sunday night, we got loads of Kilimanjaro bookings the following morning,' he explains. 'And any kind of wildlife programme, especially the Attenborough ones, will result in people booking more wildlife holidays – especially to see endangered species like the clouded leopard in Borneo.' James Willcox, founder of Untamed Borders, takes it a step further, believing that 'we are more likely these days to see bookings driven by the antics of travel YouTubers and Instagrammers than traditional travel documentaries'. One thing's for certain: the era of the patrician broadcaster showing viewers destinations they can never hope to reach has lost favour, and in its place we have the pally 'everyman' and 'everywoman' travelogue, with their smorgasbord of tick-list travel experiences. And yet, there are some antidotes to this phenomenon – in the gritty Channel 4 shows of ex-Army officer Levison Wood, for example, who slogs through inhospitable terrains from Siberia to the elephant migration routes of Burundi, and in Simon Reeve's various odysseys, in which he combines a diffident everyman approach (that appeals to the 2020s viewer) with thoughtful explorations of remote locations and communities. Wood is back with a show later in 2025 and Reeve is currently on BBC 2, exploring 'Arctic tundra, vast forests and stunning fjords in Scandinavia with Simon Reeve. 'I am very relieved Simon Reeves is back on with his Scandinavia series,' vlogger Emma Reed, who is based in Hampshire, tells me. 'Comedians on tour or hapless celeb father/son jaunts are becoming sooo tedious.' I'll raise a shot of snake's blood to that.
Daily Mail
7 hours ago
- Daily Mail
The most dangerous airports in the world revealed - including popular European holiday destination and runway where only eight pilots are allowed to land
The most dangerous airports in the world have been revealed – and one is so feared that only eight pilots are approved to land there. In a video shared to TikTok by @spreadinggeo, it's said that Paro Airport, in Bhutan, has the fifth most precarious landing on the planet. The runway at Bhutan's only international airport is completely surrounded by the Himalayas and, when landing, planes have to dive through narrow valleys with no radar. For this reason, just 17 pilots are certified to land here, and can only do so during daylight hours, and at specific times in the afternoon during windy seasons. Next on the list is Courchevel Altiport, which serves the ski resort in the French Alps – and is only accessible to small planes and helicopters. Not only is the runway here on an upward slope, but it also has ski runs right next to it, no lights, and is covered in snow and ice 70 per cent of the year. The airport has seen multiple crashes over the years due to low visibility, and planes skidding, including one in August 2021 with one fatality. The airport that takes the third place spot is very surprising, given that it sees over 1.6 million tourists through its doors every year. Madeira is the fourth most visited region of Portugal, but the island has one of the most perilous airports in the world, due to the fact it's built over the ocean and has very strong crosswinds. To be able to land here, pilots must undergo additional training. There have been four fatal plane crashes at Madeira Airport, with the most recent on 11 September 2003, when a British pilot and nine Spanish passengers died shortly after taking off. Next up is Toncontin International, an airport in Honduras that's completely surrounded by mountains. To land, planes have to make a tight 45-degree turn just moments before touchdown. According to @spreadinggeo, experienced pilots commonly say, 'You don't land at Toncontin, you survive it.' The airport has seen many fatal crashes, with the most recent being in February 2011, when a Central Airways flight crashed on approach, 20km from the airport. All 14 onboard the aircraft were killed. At Toncontin International, an airport in Honduras that's completely surrounded by mountains, planes have to make a tight 45-degree turn just moments before touchdown The most dangerous airport in the world is Lukla Airport – also known as Tenzing-Hillary Airport – in Nepal, a tiny airport nestled among the steep mountains of the Himalayas The most dangerous airport in the world is Lukla Airport – also known as Tenzing-Hillary Airport – in Nepal, and passengers may have to take something strong to steady their nerves here. The tiny airport nestled among the steep mountains of the Himalayas is 1.5 miles above sea level and surrounded by sharp peaks of up to 18,000ft tall. So treacherous is the landing that only eight pilots in the world are qualified to land there. Until July 2011, just one airline, Druk Air, was allowed to use the facility. The runway is just 6,500 feet long - one of the few in the world shorter than their elevation above sea level. Planes have to weave through the dozens of houses that are scattered across the mountainside - coming within feet of clipping the roofs. Flights are only allowed during the daytime and under visual meteorological conditions - strict light allowances in which the pilot must make his judgements by eye rather than rely on instruments, as is the case in nighttime flights. Strong winds whip through the valleys, often resulting in severe turbulence. Passengers who have been on flights to the airport have described the landing as 'terrifying'.
Telegraph
8 hours ago
- Telegraph
An insider guide to summer in Rome, Italy's eternal city
Rome has been around for almost three thousand years and yet carries all that weight of history with a dolce vita lightness of heart. It's a city that combines the intimacy and human scale of a village with the cultural draws of a historic, art-laden European metropolis. Classical ruins and early Christian places of worship stand next to – or sometimes lie beneath – Renaissance palazzos and Baroque fountains. But there are also great neighbourhood trattorias, quirky shops and a buzzing aperitivo scene. The golden rule for visitors? Don't try to cram too much in. Rome moves at a slower pace than many northern cities, and to enjoy it you should take time out in pavement cafés as well as ticking off all the big cultural draws. Explore our in-depth guides to Rome's best hotels, attractions, restaurants, shopping, nightlife and free things to do. In this guide: What's new in Rome this summer New hotel: Orient Express La Minerva opens its doors The former Grand Hotel de la Minerve has reopened as the Orient Express La Minerva, after a four-year renovation. This is the luxury rail brand's first hotel in the world. The interiors now glow with Art Deco chic, and the rooftop restaurant has reclaimed its place as one of the most spectacular in Rome's centro storico, with direct views over the Pantheon's massive cupola. Concerts: Rome Summer Fest Italian and international stars take to the stage for the city's annual music festival, Rome Summer Fest. There are more than 70 concerts scheduled between June and September this year, including A-listers from Sting and Alanis Morissette to Nick Cave. Performances are held in the outdoor Cavea at Renzo Piano's modern Auditorium Parco della Musica, a delight for architecture aficionados, as well as music fans. Patron Saint celebrations: Feast Day of Saints Peter and Paul Rome's 2025 ecclesiastical calendar is filled with Jubilee-related events, but there's one summer celebration that is uniquely Roman: The Feast Day of Saints Peter and Paul, which honours the city's patron saints each year on June 29. People will be out in droves for the Mass at the Pantheon and an infiorata (floral display) in front of St Peter's. The main attraction however, is the Girandola, a spectacular fireworks display over Castel Sant'Angelo that lights up the sky around 10:30pm.
