Imagine being diabolical enough to come up with a plan to use a cat double in order to avoid the pet policy of an airline. That's what a man from Russia did recently and is now paying the price.
It all started because the man had a cat named Victor that was 4.5 pounds over the pet weight limit. The airline wouldn't allow the cat on the flight in the cabin but would allow him to fly in the holding pen beneath the cabin with the other larger animals. That wasn't going to fly with Mikhail Galin.
He jumped on social media and enlisted the help of a local cat owner who had a cat that looked just like Victor, only much skinnier. He used that cat in order to get past the check-in at the airport and then swapped cats once in the terminal.
It was all going swimmingly until Mikhail took a bunch of social media photos and posted them online bragging about the story. It didn't take long for the airline, Aeroflot to catch wind of his plot and began an investigation.
Mikhail was a frequent flyer and the airline has now banned him, his cat and stripped him of all his flyer miles.