Veterinarians weigh in on airlines

A recent survey issued by veterinarians.org highlights what airlines they feel domestically are best to fly with pets.  The problem is, the survey is based off of DOT information so it only includes US carriers and some of those carriers are no longer even allowing animals to fly.  United for instance is ranked one of their top safest, but they haven’t flown any pets in Cargo in over 18 months. They have 1 exception and this is for accompanied pets between Hawaii and Guam for military on orders only.  Delta is also listed, but they too even prior to COVID severely restricted their number of pets flying by limiting crate size to a max of 32x22x24 and now only fly pets for military on orders which has also been in effect for over 18 months.  We brought these to their attention, but they still haven’t responded.  All that said, domestically we still have Alaska Air, Hawaiian air, and American Airlines to utilize.  Internationally, as a pet shipper we have expanded our listing of airlines used to transport pets due to Covid after careful vetting. Our go to airlines are still Lufthansa, KLM, Air France, and British, but we have expanded to use Singapore airlines with great success as well as Qatar, COPA, and Emirates.  All of their routings have care facilities so pets receive our expected level of care during transit.  The article also points out that Hawaiian is one of their worst for incidents, but they are also one of the few airlines that still accepts snub nosed breeds.  It is frustrating for someone in the industry of pet transportation to see articles published like this directly from a respected origination that has 0 knowledge of pet travel other than completing a health certificate. Most vets still think that the holds are not pressurized and temp controlled, yet in reality they do have both.