Pet Travel Airline Incident Reports
Posted Thursday, November 10th, 2005 by nycgadgetgirlLunch break blogging: I am still trying to figure out what to do about the holidays and Snickers. Last year (the first year we had Snick) my family came to NYC for the holidays. This year we are going to see my sister in Indianapolis. I am wary of planning to drive there as the Pennsylvania Turnpike can be awful that time of year. We should fly, but I don’t want to board Snick for a week. I don’t want to impose on one of my friends to dogsit. His last flying experience was terrible. I was sort of toying with the idea of flying with him anyway, but I changed my mind after reading the ASPCA’s pet travel tips and the pet travel incident numbers that the airlines are now required to make public.
[link via Modern Pooch]
November 10th, 2005 at 11:01 pm
I’ve only flown animals twice… once when I flew a momcat and her daughter to a friend who was adopting them (Errand and Garion’s mom and sister), and then when I brought Bretta back from the East Coast as a puppy.
The cat flight went swimmingly well… Northwest was great and kept me and the new adopter updated all along. Cats were no more or less neurotic once they arrived in Boston than they had been when they left Memphis (non-stop flight).
Bretta’s flight also went well, but she was in the cabin with me. My biggest fear there was that she’d subject the cabin to the Toller Puppy Scream, but she slept through the whole flight.
I’ve considered flying the dogs several times, especially when I really wanted to go to the Toller specialty show in Oregon, but I just can’t justify it. Drummer would be _terrified_. Chase would just be baffled. I’m not sure you’d even be able to fly him at Christmas anyway… I know there are limits on the high temps when you’re flying animals, and I think there are limits on the lows too.
Honestly, I’m not sure driving the turnpike would be awful. The year I rode to New York w/ M&D, I think it was mostly awful because M was driving when we hit the worst of the snow. Of course, I drive a lot in snow now, which has probably also changed my opinion. Do you really ever get the chance to drive in snow (would you be comfortable with it?)? It’s an extremely easy (albeit long) drive. The hotel is dog-friendly, so there wouldn’t be any problems once you were here.
November 10th, 2005 at 11:13 pm
Snick’s first flight went great, but he was a puppy and flew in the cabin. I thought maybe he’d do as well in cargo for his second flight, but it was a nightmare. He started crying at LGA when his crate was rolling away from us. When he got to Memphis he was so stressed out that M&D ended up driving him home at the end of the summer instead of putting him back on the plane!
Back in the days of yore (when I - GASP! - lived in New Jersey) I drove in the snow a lot, but it’s been 10 years since I’ve driven on a regular basis AT ALL, much less in the snow. I’d love to take him with us though. I’m just not sure what to do!
December 14th, 2005 at 2:57 pm
The ASPCA article has some good tips, but the numbers are nowhere near what they are reporting. I’ve been blogging the Airline Incident Reports and if you extrapolate the numbers for all of 2005 it will be less than 100 animals that are lost, injured, or died during transport. And that is with approximately 2 million animals being transported each year. Not good if your pet is one of the 100, but overall it is a very small percent. It seems like one of the best things you can do is to make sure that your pet is comfortable in its kennel, which will help keep it calm during the flight. Many of the deaths are due to often unknown pre-existing conditions that the stress of travel makes worse. So people should always evaluate their individual pet and only travel by airplane if they think their pet will handle it well.