Talaat Captan is best known for building airplane sets for film and television, but in 2012 he pointed Air Hollywood’s cabins and terminal sets at a very different audience: dogs. Air Hollywood K9 Flight School was created to help service dogs, guide dogs, emotional support animals and family pets, along with the people who travel with them, get comfortable with air travel before they ever set foot in a real airport.
An idea that started at airport security
According to ABC News, Captan got the idea after watching a dog and its owner struggle badly at an airport. The owner was stressed and the dog was panicking, and he realized he already owned a facility where people could practice every step of the journey in a calm, controlled setting. An Associated Press story the same year described it the same way: the class was his response to seeing a traveler and dog have a rough time getting through security.
The reasoning matches the thinking behind Air Hollywood’s other community programs. Open Sky for Autism uses mock flights to help families of children on the autism spectrum prepare for travel, and FearlessFlight helps nervous adults confront their fear of flying. In each case, the studio’s realistic sets let people rehearse something stressful before it counts.
What the class covered
Air Hollywood announced K9 Flight School in July 2012. Its launch announcement described a program that would walk dogs and their handlers through the whole trip:
- the sights and sounds of a busy airport terminal;
- TSA-style security checkpoints;
- crowded jet bridges and boarding;
- settling into a seat area on an airplane;
- takeoff, landing and even turbulence, recreated with a cabin motion simulator.
The program was meant to train the owners as much as the dogs, giving them practical information about how air travel works with an animal so the real trip would feel familiar.
A film set turned into a training ground
What made the class unusual was the setting. Instead of a classroom, dogs trained inside a real airliner fuselage on a sound stage, the same kind of set Air Hollywood builds for productions (explained in more detail in how Air Hollywood films airplane scenes without a real plane). When ABC News filmed the first class, extras were wheeling luggage through the terminal set and actors were playing security officers, so the dogs met the bustle of a real departure hall. The cabin simulator then shook and tilted through a takeoff, some turbulence and a landing.
The Associated Press noted two things the studio could not reproduce: the smell of jet fuel and the change in cabin pressure that makes ears pop. Everything else, from the announcements to the security screening, was designed to feel like the real thing.
The class was taught by animal trainer and lifestyle coach Megan Blake, who wrote the program and brought along her own dog, Super Smiley. Instructors could take a dog out of the simulation if it became nervous, let it settle somewhere calm, and then start again, so each animal moved at its own pace. In 2013, the class was priced at $349.
Sixty guide dog puppies on the first flight
The program premiered in 2012 with an unusual group of passengers: about 60 puppies in training with Guide Dogs for the Blind. Talaat Captan and Rick Wilcox, who oversaw the organization’s puppy training in Southern California, described the day on Pet Life Radio. Guide dogs need to stay calm in exactly the kind of crowded, noisy places that airports are, so the session gave young dogs and their volunteer raisers an early, low-stress introduction to flying. Wilcox later told the Associated Press that some of the handlers were more nervous about flying than the dogs were.
National coverage and an award-winning campaign
K9 Flight School drew wide attention. The New York Times mentioned it in a July 2012 story on Air Hollywood, and in September 2013 an Associated Press feature by Sue Manning was republished by outlets including the Daily Mail. In October 2013, ABC’s World News with Diane Sawyer covered the first class, with a companion article on ABC News online. Bill Carpenter, who brought his emotional-support dog Breeja, told ABC the class gave him confidence because it took away the unknown.
The program’s advertising also earned recognition. A K9 Flight School ad campaign created by photographer Astor Morgan in collaboration with Captan and retoucher Todd Smailles received an Honorable Mention in the Advertising (Other) category at the 2012 International Photography Awards, a competition that drew nearly 18,000 entries from 104 countries that year.
Part of a bigger pattern
K9 Flight School is one of several ventures that grew out of Air Hollywood’s sets, alongside Open Sky for Autism, FearlessFlight, Air Hollywood Props and the Pan Am Experience. Each takes the same asset, a realistic airplane and airport that never leave the ground, and uses it to make flying easier, more accessible or more enjoyable for a particular group of people.
Learn more about Air Hollywood and its founder on the Air Hollywood founder page, or return to the Talaat Captan home page for more of his work.
