I've never flown with a pet, but I can't imagine the heartache from arriving at your destination to find one of your pets has died.
It sounds like the owners did everything reasonable to prepare for the flight.
When it comes to finding United responsible, maybe travel crate companies should equip the crates with temperature sensors, so that an owner could see the conditions the pets underwent through a flight.
Owners of other pets on the flight could have seen how hot it got in the compartment, and realized what kind of peril their animals were in as well.
As an analogy, crates with delicate instruments have shock and orientation indicators, sometimes outside, and color-coded so they will be apparent on a handoff or on delivery, and sometimes inside.
Also, I wonder if United would make that data available for people who have living cargo (or otherwise precious). I'm certain that United logs the temperature and humidity of their cargo.
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I've never flown with a pet, but I can't imagine the heartache from arriving at your destination to find one of your pets has died.
It sounds like the owners did everything reasonable to prepare for the flight.
When it comes to finding United responsible, maybe travel crate companies should equip the crates with temperature sensors, so that an owner could see the conditions the pets underwent through a flight.
Owners of other pets on the flight could have seen how hot it got in the compartment, and realized what kind of peril their animals were in as well.
That's an excellent idea.
As an analogy, crates with delicate instruments have shock and orientation indicators, sometimes outside, and color-coded so they will be apparent on a handoff or on delivery, and sometimes inside.
They definitely have cargo container data recorders that monitor this stuff. I wonder if there is one for planes.
Also, I wonder if United would make that data available for people who have living cargo (or otherwise precious). I'm certain that United logs the temperature and humidity of their cargo.
You don't want the airlines doing the logging. They have a disincentive to do it correctly/report it correctly.