Pet Travel-A “High Paws” Story
You always seem to hear the upsetting stories related to pets and travel and how irresponsible the airlines are in regards to pets. I have a good story. Recently I had a client that was shipping his German Rottweiler “Zoe” from San Francisco to Nashville Tennessee. The dog is a hefty dog weighing 140 LBS and travels in an “extra, extra large” crate; this crate is the largest one available to purchase and measures 35 inches high. Because of the size of this crate, pets can only travel on wide body aircraft; any of the smaller jets cannot load the crate on board-it does not fit. We looked at a couple of options to ship Zoe to Nashville. Delta Air Lines offered a schedule that we felt would accommodate Zoe the best for his journey. On departure day, I went in to track Zoe’s flight to see if it was departing as scheduled. I quickly noted that Zoe was checked in on time for the flight booked out of San Francisco with Delta Cargo operations at SFO Airport but had been rebooked for a later departure. This was curious to me because the dog had been checked in for one flight but changed to another. The original flight departed as scheduled but not with Zoe. I called Delta Air Lines “Pets First” desk to inquire why they had changed the schedule. The agent I spoke with could not tell from the computer what had happened and called the station in SFO to get more information. Here’s what I was told: Delta loaded the dog and crate onto the flight and aircraft originally booked when the pilot advised the ground crew that he had noted a problem with the oxygen in the cargo bay where the pets go and advised that there was in fact ‘no oxygen’ for the dog and to unload it. The ground crew removed Zoe and quickly booked him for a later, SAFER flight. How cool is that! Extra long day for the dog but he arrived safe and sound into Nashville!
High Paws to Delta Air Lines!