more to the story wrote:
She was travelling home to treat a medical condition which she believed to be urgent. She likely was not in the best mental state (my life versus the rodent's life!). What should she have done?
Ah, no. She had learned already that the growth in her neck was benign, there was absolutely no urgency for her to return home.
But, who cares, she had 8 hours until her flight. Do you think this woman maybe has a cell phone and access to the internet? If she wanted to put the animal down she couldn't have just taken a cab to any vet to deal with it? Or wow, with 15 seconds of searching, the Maryland SPCA is 13.9 miles away. less than 30 minutes, go there, walk in, drop it off on the front desk, walk away without saying a word and let them deal with it.
That woman had a million options. Saying she was left with no choice and somehow blaming the airline is ridiculous. She chose to kill her "support animal" in a cruel way. She had plenty of time to come up with other very obvious options to flushing it down the toilet.