Traveling with pets can be tough.
When driving, you have to ensure that your furry friends get enough time to potty and stretch their legs, plus deal with hotel pet policies. It drives me nuts when a hotel bills itself as ‘pet friendly’ but the fine print lists a 15 or 20 lbs limit. Or when they accept large dogs for a nominal cleaning fee, then try to stick you in a smoking room. At least you have nearly complete control over your own pets!
The same cannot be said for flying. I have never flown with a pet, nor do I intend to without a darned good reason. The horror stories of lost, sick, injured, and deceased pets are impossible to ignore. While some are surely cases of owner mismanagement (putting an elderly or sick dog in cargo during hot weather, for example), there are also numerous cases of airlines/airports being at fault. Crated dogs left out on tarmacs in the hot sun for hours. Cats put on the wrong connecting flights and ended up hundreds or thousands of miles from home. Animals simply lost somewhere between check-in and baggage claim. It’s enough to make me think long and hard about ever putting a dog on a plane.
And let’s not forget the cost! It boggles my mind that I could fly to Chicago, round trip, for roughly $150, but bringing Sadie with me adds another $200+ each way. Sure, I’m in economy class, but I get free water, climate control, and a bathroom. She gets a crate in a pressurized cargo bay. Why is her ‘ticket’ more than double mine? Yes, the airline needs to be more careful, and moving a heavy item requires more work… but $200 per flight? Charge me $75 and actually take care of the animal and I’ll think about it.
Now United has apparently put a whole new level of pet fees (see MSNBC article) into play.
Based on the article, most airlines book pets as excess baggage. United has changed the classification of checked pets traveling to and from Japan from ‘baggage’ to ‘cargo.’ And with that, the pet fees have apparently skyrocketed from about $300 per flight, to nearly $4,000 for a large animal. The airline says this is due to Japanese laws and freight fees, and the United does not see an extra penny. So I have to ask, if the airline doesn’t benefit and the customers suffer, why do it? This was a choice made by the airline, not a requirement by law.
Per the article, this will likely affect military personnel the most. With a contractual obligation to use United, and income that is insufficient to cover the new fees, there is the potential that military families moving to or from Japan will have to kill or abandon pets. Can you imaging living on a military base in Japan with your family and two long-time pet dogs, only to find out that you have to relocate back to the US and moving just the dogs will cost $6,000? It is potentially sad on many levels.
I decided to look into the United pet fees myself. Their policies are actually quite easy to find, including detailed charts of fees to and from various places. (With the caveat that you may have to do currency conversions to understand the actual costs.) The results of this research were rather fascinating.
A large dog, traveling within the US, costs $250 one way. That same dog, travelling from Japan to the US, costs 22,000 JPY, or $277 according to Google (see conversion). So that’s 700 miles (source), or $0.36 per mile for the Chicago trip, and 6,700 miles (source), or $0.04 per mile for the trip from Japan. Firstly, there is something completely wrong with that picture. Nine times more expensive for 1/10 the distance? Secondly, I could find absolutely no reference to the new fees and cargo designation (at $3,000, that comes to $0.45 per mile). I find it unlikely that the reported fees are fictional, since the article has statements from the airline, so I’m wondering when exactly they planned to inform people of these staggering fees.
Luckily, I have no reason to send my pups to Japan. Nor do I intend to put them in any plane in the near future. But for those of you who do intent to fly with a pet, please look anywhere but United!
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