April 18, 2009

An Airline Just for Pets

We've been reading about a new airline company called Pet Airways, and they seem to have an interesting concept going. They have designed the cabin areas of their planes exclusively for pets, with the seats having been removed to make room for pet carriers, so no human passengers are allowed. These areas are reported to be climate controlled, pressurized, and fully lit, just as with normal airlines, and a pet attendant is present at all times to see to your pet's needs.

Weekly flights are scheduled to begin in July, and will go between New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Denver, and Los Angeles, though they claim that other cities will be added as the year progresses. Pet owners will be able to track their pet's travel progress online with their Pet Tracker service.

As a dog owner, I find this to be a great idea. It doesn't take much research to learn how bad it is to have your dog packed into the cargo bay of an airplane, which is what most airlines do with them, and I've never found the concept of stuffing my canine babies in a carrier under a seat for hours on end to be very appealing either (which is the only other option for air travel, IF your pet is very small). However, I'm just waiting to see how things pan out with Pet Airways.

Their site is currently offline, which they claim is due to an overwhelming response to their service, and they have given an eMail address where you can make reservations instead. On one hand, this is understandable, because maybe they just underestimated how many people would be interested. But on the other hand, it shouldn't be taking an organized airline this long to increase their server capacity to allow customer access. Will the website be stable by July, when customers are supposed to be able to use it to track their pet's travel progress?

Another thing that has been at the back of my mind is; has anyone managed to find a picture of one of the cabins of these planes? Maybe I'm just paranoid when it comes to my dogs, but I think I'd appreciate seeing exactly what sort of setting my pups would be traveling in.

1 comment:

Puppies for Sale said...

As a pet shipper and transportation member, I haven't had any issues with the existing methods of transporting pets on the airlines. I can see this option being extremely expensive and I can't see their being enough of a demand to justify the cost of transporting between airports.