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| I was really worried when I flew our two cats from the UK to CH recently. They're both quite nervy and have never travelled well in the car but they travelled in the 'hold', not in the cabin, and arrived seemingly unphased by the whole experience. I think they probably just went to sleep. Them travelling separately also took a little bit of the stress out of our trip over, I'm not sure I could have coped with them howling at me through the flight on top of everything else :-) Good Luck! | |
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While this may be sufficient from the relatively-close UK, I would not consider this for a trans-Atlantic flight, and certainly not if coming from anywhere but the Northeast US non-stop. In the best case, the animal sleeps through the entire trip. But if a problem occurs, you won't know until it's too late. I did it myself, bringing our 9 yr old lab from France to the USA, and it was a pretty nerve-wracking
flight although she arrived safely with no issues.
Here is an
blog posting that addresses some of the serious concerns of flying in a passenger plane with an animal in the cargo hold.
A friend on a UA flight from SF-NY told me the pilot chose to make an emergency landing in Denver because he was unsure if there was sufficient cabin pressure in the cargo hold (don't believe the 'unpressurized
myths', but problems do occur), and he knew there was a dog aboard. Everything turned out okay, and she mentioned that the inconvenienced passengers were very supportive of the decision. But options like that are not very plentiful on a US to Zurich flight.
BAM