Muscat: A recent Facebook story by a Canadian expatriate Jordan Ross, who was a resident of Oman till recently, about how an airline helped her get out of the country with her family, and their pet dog, has gone viral.
After her husband was laid off in April, the couple had been trying to return home with their service dog. “He’s not only my assistance dog but is also diabetic. He can only fly in the cabin,which is not allowed on the repatriation flights,” Ross wrote on the popular What’s Happening Oman forum on Facebook.
“So we’ve been searching for another way home. I was losing hope. We were running out of money waiting for the airport to open. Then I found another American family who were in the same position. They had an assistance dog that couldn’t ride in the hold. So we put our heads together and thought it can’t hurt to approach SalamAir to organise a charter to Doha that would allow our request for accommodating the pets. From Doha we can transit to our home countries,” Ross went on to explain in her story. With the airline giving them the green signal, Ross and her friend got down to finding passengers to fill the flight.
'Devastated'
'“We had confirmation from 70 people. We submitted it to the airlines and it was accepted! A date and time was set. But when time came to book seats, many couldn’t commit due to the departure time, connection problems, costs, etc. We were devastated! We worked so hard to make this flight happen with our dogs on board. But then Majd, an employee from the airline, came to our rescue. He told us we were 20 tickets short of covering costs for this flight. We had one hour to sell 20 more seats. My husband and I offered to buy 5 more seats! It would’ve emptied all our bank accounts but that’s how badly we needed this flight to happen. Majd recognised our commitment to this flight. So he said okay, hang on let me see what I can do.”
Long story short, Majd’s earnest endeavour and hard work to make this flight happen bore fruit without getting having to pay extra for the tickets.
“When he told us to keep our money and that he would see us all at check in on Thursday, I just started crying and crying. I know other passengers did too. How do we say thank you? This is the Omani kindness I will cherish forever. They cared about us.”
