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At the risk of wearing out this subject, I continue to find out little tidbits of info - which I am very generously sharing so you won't spend as much time as I have on the phone talking with everyone and their brother about shipping your dog over 100 lbs. What can I say, I'm a very nice girl.
First of all, if the airline rep you have has to look up the regulations, it's probably not a good sign...ask for a supervisor. You will get gray hair while you wait, but they generally have a little better concept. Get all of your questions in one place...I spent hours arguing over a 4 hour layover for dogs rule that I was told was for customs (and there is no customs to USVI from stateside), only to find it has nothing to do with customs at all, but Dept. of Agri regs on shipping live animals.
I live in west Arkansas - nearest airport is Little Rock. After (repeatedly) going over my travel plans, I now find out that United, Continental, Delta and Northwest do not fly planes out of Little Rock Regional that are large enough to accomodate a Series 500 kennel. Only USAir...and they can only put one at a time on any flight unless I want to drive 400 lbs of dogs to Dallas, in which case everything goes different. When you have multiple dogs, this presents quite the challenge...and make sure you don't switch over to a partner airline at some point in your journey where all the rules change yet again.
If you are not near a major airport, be sure and ask if the plane you are flying to your connection has room for a large crate, and if you're flying more than one, find out how many it can hold. If you are like I am, you might be at the mercy of USAir and their ridiculous rules and fees, but whatever...it will be worth it in the long run. An FYI for those interested - flying to STX from Little Rock, each dog is $575 + approx. $125 (pickup and overnight in Charlotte, which they have to do because they will not allow more than one transfer per trip)...and you can't check your dog out and go to a hotel and return the next morning, or they call it a new trip and charge you double. They MAKE the dog stay over, but you can't take it to a hotel - and all of the airlines would not let me split my personal trip into two legs in order to take care of the dogs myself - nope, that's two trips as well.
Cape Air will not fly large dogs out of SJU or STT - Seaborne will, but you just have to wait until there is room, which could be a long time...
Moral of the story: patience and fortitude are key. And a big wad of cash.
Posted : August 11, 2005 12:41 pm
Wow! Good Luck Becky. Too bad we're not in your area to help out. You almost need travel companions for your canine companions.
Posted : August 11, 2005 1:38 pm
I just wanted to add a note about flying on Seaborne with large dogs. We had called and talked with more than one agent and even visited the dock in STX to ask about flying from SJU to STX with large dogs. They assured us everything would be fine, when we showed up at the Seaplane in SJU the agents there where very surprised to see two large dogs in two large crates. The crates wouldn’t even fit in the cargo hold, let alone two of them. Since we were obviously stuck, the wonderful people at Seaborne worked with us, what they ended up doing was taking the smaller crate apart and putting it back together in the cargo hold, then my fiancé walked the dogs up and in to the crate in the plane. Both dogs had to go in one crate. While we all got here, I would not recommend this, if the Seaborne agents hadn’t been so accommodating we could have been stranded in SJU. Flying large dogs here is headache but they are our family so we had to make it work. When we move back to the states we plan on flying the dogs on the jet straight to Miami. I would recommend this to anyone wanting to fly large dogs to the islands, I’ve known a lot of people who’ve done this at it is much easier. (Even during the heat embargo)
Lauren
Posted : August 11, 2005 3:54 pm
