Service animal monkey reportedly gets loose on flight

As more flights have an increasing variety of support animals for passengers, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that a service monkey that got loose on a Frontier Airlines flight from Columbus, Ohio, to Las Vegas Tuesday night.

Flight 1087 departed from McCarran International Airport at 9:43 p.m. and landed at 11:02 p.m. All passengers were able to exit the flight.

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McCarran International Airport spokeswoman Melissa Nunnery told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that a flight staffer said "the monkey was loose, or got loose" in the main cabin of the flight. There was no clarification as to what "loose" meant.

"The monkey was never loose in the cabin," Frontier spokesman Richard Oliver told the Las Vegas Review-Journal Wednesday. "It was always with the passenger it was traveling with."

Oliver told The Associated Press that the passenger violated policy by not telling the airline about bringing a service animal on board, saying that the passenger secretly brought the animal on the plane in a duffel bag. He was seen styowing the monkey in his shirt.

According to Oliver, the passenger would not hand over documents verifying the monkey was a certified service animal.

Whether or not the passenger will face consequences is not clear, but McCarran International Airport spokeswoman Christine Crews said law enforcement officials met up with the plane and determined the monkey was a certified service animal.

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