American SPCA honors American Airlines

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

NEW YORK, N.Y.––The
American SPCA on March 27 honored
American Airlines with a
Corporate Citizen Award, a year
after American Airlines received the
Animal Transportation Association’s
Animal Welfare Award.
Both awards recognize not
only safe routine handling of about
100,000 animals per year, but also
American Airlines’ donation of
transportation in connection with
numerous exotic animal rescues
facilitated by ASPCA wildlife programs
director Kathi Travers. In one
instance American Airlines put a
jumbo jet on a route normally handled
by smaller aircraft, to fly three
African lions to a sanctuary near Fort
Worth, Texas.

Travers and American
Airlines recently teamed up to make
a training film about airport and inflight
animal handling.
But Travers’ longtime
chief contact, corporate communications
executive Gus Whitcomb, left
American Airlines one day before
the ASPCA award ceremony, to
take a job at Air West.