Hi Everyone!

Ok I admit it, for an obsessed person like me, this is tough, stressing, depressing, everything!

We are moving to Zurich with our 3 year-old male yellow Labrador Retriever (around 34-35 kg) in mid-December from New Jersey.

I did an extensive search about the documents that I need to provide to import him to Switzerland, OK. But we need to buy our tickets and I have NO idea which airline is the best.

United Airlines - Charges $1039 for my Lab plus the crate fee, which will make the cost of transportation nearly $1500 to carry him.

Swiss Airlines - Charges CHF500 for my lab.

Delta Airlines - Charges $600.00 minimum and $12.85 per kilo?? I could not understand what this means.

ACE Pet Travel - I found this company from this forum and sent them an e-mail. I am waiting for the cost.

Any experiences with any of these companies? I desperately need your experiences/opinions.

I just want him to travel safe, that's it.

Thank you very much!

On 5 July, we flew from Seattle to Frankfort and rented a car and drove to Chur to lessen the hours of flight time, went with Condor Air, as they have direct flights. (10 hr). it was only 200 Euros extra, and we flew an upgraded business class for 600 a piece, which was cheap for a oneway ticket, as it seemed to raise the fare with all the other airlines. I think United quoted me 2,000 per person for a one way.

We just flew our beagle back to the US on Swiss Air on Friday. All went well. The paperwork needed to get her back to the US was a lot easier than it was coming over here. Good luck!

Swiss hands down - have flown our lab mix to Canada a bunch of times without any problems.

Thank you very much!

I think we are going to fly him with Swiss as well. Thank you very much!

We did a move this summer with our lab from San Francisco to Zurich with REX travel they arranged the flight and Charlie as excess baggage, $250 + the airline ticket for us and provide the paperwork for entering Zurich. I checked with others but none could issue the ticket, they wanted only my pet to travel seperate which I did not want. Hope it helps

I moved to Zurich recently from Houston. I tried to get my Corgi here last month via United - I spent weeks doing all the paperwork, even flew home to travel back with him only to find out 5 days before our flight that since his microchip had gone missing, I would have to get a new one. Which was fine except then the microchip wouldn't match his current rabies vacc. Which was fine, I would just get a new rabies. Which wasn't fine because that meant they wouldn't allow him into Switzerland until 21 days after the rabies which was ridiculous because he was already current on his rabies. Didn't seem to matter, so I flew home without him.

Since I have a new microchip and a new rabies, I'm going to try and go back and get him in a couple of weeks. United is about $1000 one way. Since there isn't a direct between Houston and Zurich, I have to make a stop on the US side so I don't have to worry about him coming into an additional country.

Also, you have to have a Health Certificate that is valid for only 10 days - what you need to know is that not every vet has a USDA certification, so only certain vets can issue the Health Certificate that Switzerland requires. So, I had to go to a different vet (20 miles from my house) for this.

Let me know what you ended up doing and how your experience was.

- Jennifer

wow, sorry to hear such troubles...

our experience was full of bs just like yours with the micro chip, a new European one, because the
Old Seattle USA one isn't compatible or unreadable, (isn't true, I was at the police station when we got here and they gave me the little wand detector, and the first chip detected was the old one)
We did plan ahead and got the chip and rabies 6 months before the flight, but having to get the USDA cert. We had to pay overnight both ways to get the exam/form to the state capitol USDA office and for their approval stamp, (our flight was July 5) the 4th a holliday. We went with Condor air, as they had super cheap prices for Business class one way, and the dog was only 250$ for a one way to Frankfurt, then we drove into Switzerland. I think if I had to do it all over again, I would beg my family to take care of our dog, it's been so much extra work getting her over there, and now living on the 4th floor, taking her down and up 58 stairs 6 times a day, vacuuming all the hair 3 times a day because she goes through 2 shed seasons a year. And making sure the 3 year 8 months old doesn't pester the dog and get bit... yeah... fun fun fun :-)

good luck

I would recommend that you call and speak with the airlines to see how the pet is treated during the entire logistics process. For example, how long are they sitting on the runway before they get on the plane, is the truck that they are in climate controlled. What is the temperature of the hold where they are kept on the plane and what care do they receive during the flight. Is it a direct flight or are there stops.

These prices seem awfully high to me. We flew in March from Detroit to Frankfurt with our 25kg mutt on Delta for $200. We watched them load him into the cargo area before the flight so we knew he was on board. Then we drove 5 hours to Lausanne in order to eliminate any plane changing and any risk that he would not be on the next connection, and also to reduce the amount of time he had to spend in a kennel with no way to relieve himself. The flight went just fine, everything worked well, and the Delta staff were great.

I would definitely check with all the airlines, though. Most of them have travel embargoes during certain months. For example, Delta will not fly animals from November-March or from June-August. This means you essentially have four months of the year that you can actually fly a pet. Outside of the embargo time frames, you can use a pet transport agency, like the one you mentioned above, but be prepared to spend more than twice the cost of a regular round trip ticket. We were quoted a figure of $2500 one way, and our own tickets were only $1200 each, round trip.

If you are doing a corporate move in which you have someone helping you with all your travel, you can also ask that person to help you navigate some of this. It was actually our corporate travel agent who contacted Delta and found us the cheaper rate. On our own, the best we found was $800. You can also try using the concierge service if you have an American Express platinum. I heard of one person who was able to find something less expensive that way.

Thanks for sharing! It is indeed a difficult process. If I had it to do over again, I also would have packed dog food in my container to help with the "change over" process as it looks like I won't be able to bring any with me when I ship him - "meat products" in the food.

i flew mine with united .
was below decks and cost me 125 dollars. 3 stops and everytime they came to my seat letting me know he was doing well.