How do you book pet-friendly flights and travel?
Last month, I was preparing for travel with my new puppy, Coco! And while looking online at our typical travel booking sites, I realized there was no easy way to find out which flights would accept my pet.
So I started digging deeper into the process and realized that in order for me to book a flight, I had to:
- Search which airlines accepted pets
- Find the flight I wanted to book / cross reference like 100x
- Call the airline to reserve my pet (on hold for like an hour!)
- Pay the airline pet travel fee
- Search and buy the appropriate travel carrier size
After several hours of just reading up on this and getting this arranged, I had to then navigate the process of getting the paperwork in place, as we were booking a domestic and international travel (I'll share for another post) for my puppy.
So of course, I went to a few Facebook groups to see what others were experiencing, and saw a trend that others were also having lots of hesitation and challenges in booking travel with pets.
Noticing that just searching for the flights alone involved so many steps, I'm building a basic travel booking search in order to find pet-friendly flights. This will help me an any other pet owners who travel with their pets find the right flight much easier.
Curious to know how others' pet travel experience has been and what other trends you've noticed?
It is not as simple as you think, but it is possible. You need a special plane ticket and a special passport for your pet. Without it, the US border control won't let you enter the US. Also, your pet should be fully vaccinated and perfectly fit. Still, it depends on the country where you want to take your pet. In hana things are a bit different, for example. You can read more about the road to hana stops on the internet.