Flying pets home gets hard for forces abroad
Missy Lee, a civilian who works for the U.S. Army, paid Delta Air Lines $5,000 to transport her two white shepherds as cargo on the same flight she took when moving to Japan in 2014.
In the years since, the industry of shipping pets overseas has drastically changed — and Lee is forking over nearly double that amount to ship the pooches back home later this month.
Delta, like all U.S. carriers, now requires pets flying cargo on international routes — as large dogs like Lee’s must — to be booked through certain pet-shipping companies, which charge for their services. In May, United Airlines banned 21 breeds of dogs and cats from its flights, as well as big dogs, such as Great Danes and golden retrievers, that require a crate taller than 30 inches.
Together, the policy shifts have left military members overseas — and other American expats — with two ways of flying those prohibited breeds or large dogs home: working with third-party firms to send them as cargo on U.S. airlines that accept them or on cargo-only carriers, or using foreign airlines with less direct routes. Either can be far more expensive.
The shrunken pool of options has U.S. military personnel all over the world scrambling to come up with enough money to ensure they don’t have to leave their four-legged family members behind. U.S. Transportation Command, which oversees all movement of military personnel and property, estimates that about 300 pets in Japan whose owners are moving this summer are affected by the United changes.
Lee, who is flying back to the States on Delta in late June, recently bought tickets for her dogs through Animal Fly International, a company that is a member of the International Pet and Animal Transportation Association. The best deal they found for the pups, however, was on the Japanese carrier All Nippon Airways. The price tag, including fees for the booking service: $9,400.
Lee’s next post is in Michigan, where she is under contract to buy a house. She said she has asked to delay the closing by one pay period because of the unexpected price tag of flying her pooches, Snowy and Andre.
“We could have used the money toward the closing costs,” she said. “But my dogs come first.”
United’s PetSafe program was previously a favorite for U.S. military members moving overseas, because its cost was routinely lower than competitors’. But after blunders earlier this year, including twice sending dogs to the wrong location and the death of a French bulldog that had been placed in an overhead bin by a flight attendant, the company put PetSafe on hold to review its policies.
In early May, United announced new restrictions on breeds that would be allowed on flights when the program reopens to new reservations June 18.
“The overwhelming concern was what was in the best interest of pets that we fly,” said United spokesman Charles Hobart.
Hobart said United will allow military families, no matter where they are stationed, to ship their pets stateside if United was the carrier that brought the animals overseas originally.
“If we flew your pet,” Hobart said, “we will fly it back.”
But there’s a catch: Travel must be completed by June 17, before the PetSafe reservation system opens again. Hobart declined to say whether the company would work out a way for military pet owners to ship animals home on the carrier after that date because, he said, he did “not want to set that expectation.”
An exception was already in place for military pets leaving the Pacific island of Guam, where the sole U.S. carrier to fly is United. Hobart said there is no closing date on that policy, which allows military families returning from the U.S. territory to send pets home even if they aren’t allowed under the new restrictions.
Sarah’s Pet Paradise, a California-based company that specializes in arranging pet shipments for military members, says it received about 275 emails a day from potential customers after United announced its new policy.
“They have changed the world of transport for everybody,” said Angelina Brewer, the firm’s senior adviser on international transport. “Internationally, it’s devastating - to us and to military members.”
United charges by the weight of the animal and its crate. Other passenger airlines, as customers are finding out, charge by volume, whether they’re shipping a pallet of Pepsi or a crated Corgi - and that’s almost always pricier.
Sarah’s Pet Paradise recently compiled a list of quotes from Nippon Express, a global pet and cargo shipper, for shipping larger dogs as cargo freight, Brewer said. Flying a Labrador retriever from Tokyo to Los Angeles, for example, would cost about $4,900. If the same dog is flying out of Okinawa, the price jumps to $6,100.