Exporting Dogs JKF to Heathrow...

[PRomain]

Hi, we are urgently trying to arrange export of two dogs (will be using 2 x Sky Kennel 5) from New York to London (we can go to Manchester UK if necessary) and have just been told by Virgin America that it would be over $2000 per dog and not bookable earlier than June!

Can anyone please advise of a cheaper route, hopefully much cheaper! And some way of doing this much quicker. The owner is currently UK citizen resident in US who needs to return to UK for health reasons and this is urgent.

Many thanks

[christinegilbert]

Are you flying with your pets or trying to use their cargo services? Cargo services is going to be much more expensive than flying as additional luggage on a booked flight. Have you checked other airlines? I think British Airways allows pets. If the problem is the cost for flying into the UK (a lot of airlines don't even offer this service, even if they do allow it to Europe in general) it might be cheaper to look at an airline like Iberia, flying into Paris (per dog is probably $300-$400 each if they are flying as checked luggage) and then driving into the UK (7-9 hour drive). Here are some options for getting from Paris to the UK: [url]http://www.parislogue.com/travel-tips/getting-from-london-to-paris.html[/url]

If you're just looking at shipping the dogs alone, it might be cheaper, believe it or not, to actually pay for someone to fly out with your dogs. If that's the case, you can probably get someone to do it for the free airfare.

Also, all of this is assuming you have the paperwork completed for their PETS program which takes a few weeks to do the blood titer, or that you're prepared to allow the dogs to be quarantined.

Good luck!

[Jerry]

I do not know how large your dogs are but the normal air cargo charge is closer to $500 for a medium sized pet. There are handling charges on arrival which normally total about $350.

I would think about $1000 a dog for a medium sized pet. I would check with Continental and Delta and perhaps Air France.

Jerry