Acclaimed Australian poet Fiona Wright has had to cancel her appearance at the Northern Territory Writers' Festival after Qantas told her she could not take her trained assistance dog on board.
Ms Wright said she first applied to Qantas seven weeks ago to take her assistance dog aboard the flight to Alice Springs.
But after providing multiple rounds of supporting documentation, she was knocked back in what she described as "discrimination".
"I'm supposed to be appearing at the NT Writers' Festival this weekend, but Qantas is not going to let me fly to Alice Springs with my assistance dog, because she's been trained and certified in NSW, where I live, and not Queensland," Ms Wright tweeted.
"After filling in an eight-page form, written in language so dense I had trouble understanding any of it, they’ve asked me for more documentation, and then more documentation again."
The award-winning poet and critic suffers from mental health conditions and has written a collection of essays that detail her experience with anorexia. 
Ms Wright said she then had to provide four further rounds of documentation to the airline, but she was still denied access.
Australian poet Fiona Wright's assistance dog named Virginia. Source: Twitter 'WritesFiona'
"I’ve done everything they’ve asked, spent hours chasing up qualifications and letters and forms from all of the people I’ve worked with, even answered insulting and probably illegal questions about the nature of my disability," she said.
"And all to no avail. All of my evidence that my dog is a fully-trained and certified assistance dog is not enough for Qantas. At no stage have they specified precisely what evidence would count."
Ms Wright said she had got her assistance dog through mindDog Australia, which helps mental health sufferers to find, train, and certify psychiatric assistance dogs.
Part of mindDog's certification process is making sure all the dogs meet a standard that guarantees them access to public places and public transport.
Ms Wright said other airlines have allowed her dog on board, with, for her, Qantas the only exception.
"Qantas the only airline in Australia that has a problem with MindDog, the organisation I worked with to get my assistance dog, but the only one flying from Sydney to Alice," she said.
"This whole process has been deeply upsetting and taken a ton of my time and energy. This is out and out discrimination, Qantas, and I will be following this up with the Human Rights Commission."
Qantas did respond to one of Ms Wright's tweets, offering to look into her case.
"Hi Fiona, we'd like to look into this," Qantas said.
"Can you please direct message us your best contact number and we'll have someone call you."
A Qantas spokesperson told SBS News that the company understood the situation had been "disappointing" for Ms Wright.
"Qantas is bound by Federal legislation, including CASA regulations, to ensure all service dogs travelling in the cabin meet the required standards, including training standards," the spokesperson said.
"Unfortunately, in this case, on the information provided, Qantas could not be satisfied that the mindDog training provided met the training standards required."
The Qantas spokesperson said it had been working with mindDog for some time to assess whether its training standards meet civil aviation requirements, but the airline had not yet been satisfied that was the case.
