Top Five Deadliest Airlines for Dogs

[Athy]

http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/traveling-pets-airlines-dog-deaths/story?id=11198807

Athy

[Elaine]

Hmmm …

The article is interesting… but I wonder if the author has actually ever flown a dog. We’ve actually flown several dogs in the past 3-5 years, and years ago I flew dogs back and forth across the country for breeding and showing. In recent years we’ve flown Tag, Jamie, Titan (twice), Tungsten (twice), Wei (twice) and Wah. We've used that airlines mentioned. I can compare what we experienced rather recently with the experience of flying dogs about 15-20 years ago. In my opinion, the biggest problem today is that there are no direct flights anymore, and there seem to be fewer flights per day on some routes, so you have less recourse if you miss a connecting flight. Every passenger has to go through some hub, regardless of he destination. Heck, if we want to ship a dog up to Washington DC (from NC) I’d bet it has to go to Atlanta or Chicago first. I can literally drive the dog to Washington DC faster than the airlines can fly it, because of the routing through a hub.

Making connecting flights is the single biggest key to a successful journey. Some airlines are notorious for not getting off the ground on time, which means you know from the get go that you are going to miss the connecting flight. We have had situations where our dog was literally on the tarmac in Raleigh Durham Airport for half an hour, on its way to the West coast, through Atlanta… and we knew before the flight ever left the runway in Raleigh (half an hour late) that it had a snowballs chance in hell of making the connection in Atlanta, which was the last flight out on a Friday evening, which would have meant a weekend stay at some boarding kennel in Atlanta GA. The airlines would not return the plane to the gate to take our dog off the flight for a connection it would very likely not make. (Btw, flight crews pull away from the gate even when they know the plane is not going any further than a few hundred yards because the crew does not get paid until the plane pulls away from the gate)

If you are a two-legged passenger you can deal with a missed connection, a dog can not.

All sorts of problems occur when ground crew personal decide to interact with the dog… for example, once the crate door is open, the dog can get loose at the airport, which is never a good thing.

The article mentions that one airliine claims to have an air conditioned truck to transport the dogs, maybe that is something new, but that is not our experience at RDU with that airline. Rather, they put the dog's crate on a canvas covered tram that is also used for luggage.

[pretty dobe]

You guys are lucky on the east coast....You have that Pet Airways that are traveling all over the east and the dogs fly in the plane. Last I heard they were going to start taking the pet owners with them if they wanted. Haven't heard anything lately on them though. I know they were also expanding further to the west.



www.petairways.com