It’s hard to separate fact and fiction these days.
A letter from Joan Draper in Ramat Gan, Israel tells of her dog Turtle creating mayhem in transit at Paris Charles-de-Gaulle Airport, when he escaped from his unlocked cage, might have been a scene from Keystone Cops. To lock or not to lock the cage of a traveling pet is a crucial concern for civil aviation.
But the arcane domain of frequent flier programs becomes even more surreal with news that Virgin Atlantic has launched a ‘Flying Paws’ reward program for traveling cats, dogs, and ferrets. (Rabbits, hamsters, crustaceans and ornamental tropical fish are left to make their own arrangements (www.defra.go.uk)
On their first flight Virgin Atlantic gives jet-setting pets a ‘welcome onboard pet pack.’ Dogs are given a ‘Virgin doggy t-shirt and sparkling dog tag.’ Cats are given a toy mouse called ‘Red’ and a Virgin collar tag; and ferrets receive ‘a cool limited edition flying jacket and collar tag.’
Pets that travel on the European Union’s Passport for Pets scheme are given a passport ‘which not only gives them a record of all their flights, but allows them to collect “paw prints” which they will be able to redeem for gifts.’ After 10, 15 and 20 flights pets can claim rewards from ‘blow-dries and pedicures to Prado, Burberry, and Gucci pet clothing, to a personal “Pawtrait” from famous artist Cindy Lass, renowned for her paintings of celebrities [sic] furry companions around the world.’
One paw print is awarded per flight; five paw prints brings a galaxy of goodies, such as handmade Virgin bowls plus a non- slip mouse mat so they can ‘dine in style’ or choose to donate their rewards ‘worth £50’ to their favorite animal charity or sanctuary.’
‘If they’re feeling especially loving toward their human friend, they can show their true feelings by donating 1,000 bonus air miles to his or her “Flying Club” account.’
How do I deal with readers’ letters asking how to convert pet miles into people miles?
Question: ‘My ferret Joshua has accumulated 100,000 pet miles in the Virgin Atlantic program. Can I redeem these for an upgrade to business class on my next flight to Orlando?’
Answer: ‘Joshua and you should have reciprocal rights on flights taken separately or together. But check the exchange rate between pet miles and people miles. Joshua could be entitled to elite status with access to the cargo hold lounge. But do make sure that Joshua, or heaven forbid, the animal rights folk do not get to know what you are planning.’
Airlines have different requirements about carrying pets on board. Virgin Atlantic, in common with most carriers, does not allow pets to travel in the cabin with their owners. But they are individually collected at check-in and travel in a separate part of the hold from the baggage, with controlled temperature, and fed water, according to Marianne Jenson, a Virgin spokeswoman in London.
Air France, one of the few dog-friendly airlines, allows dogs up to 5 kilograms to sit in the cabin; United Airlines allows ‘small dogs or cats’ to travel in a cage under the seat; guide dogs are confined to the hold. British Airways requires all pets to be checked in as ‘excess baggage;’ except for guide dogs which are allowed a seat of their own.
Pets should not be sedated and given a light meal before traveling. Take care to check quarantine and vaccination rules and make sure you have the documents you need. You’ll find useful tips at www.hotdogsholidays.com.
China Southern Airlines joins our ongoing debate on the crucial issue of traveling with pets, with a charmingly succinct release in the apocryphal (‘There’s a French widow in every bedroom’) guide book tradition.
‘Pets are not allowed on board the aircraft, except for dogs for the seeing impaired.’ This is because ‘once a dog or a cat becomes agitated… it may run about the cabin and is very likely to bite off its restraining leash, or hamper flight attendants in their duty.’ Or ‘the pet could carry bacteria or parasites and since the cabin is a sealed and constant temperature environment which is favorable to the multiply [sic] and infection of the bacteria, it could affect the health of passengers and aircrew.’ What is more, ‘some pets, such as mice, could easily throw passengers into a panic; and pets of any species can leave their droppings randomly in the cabin.’
China Southern provides exemplary specifications on the size and the ventilation of pets’ traveling boxes, ‘which must be firm enough to prevent the pet from opening it from the inside, and able to hold the pet’s droppings during the flight and ground handling,’ along with the need for quarantine certificates.
‘If you consign your pet to China Southern, it will enjoy a first class cargo service; it will not only be looked after before the boarding but also be supervised during the entire trip,’ we are assured by Li Kun, chief operating officer at China Southern Airlines.
I am pondering the possible fate of my ferret Joshua on a hypothetical flight to Guangzou, when another release from China Southern, this time with a Chicago dateline, hits my mailbox.
It transpires that 470 ‘Canadian breeding pigs’ were flown to Shenzen; ‘accompanied on board with their own “welcoming ceremony” of a three-step disinfection.’ After the 14-hour flight to China ‘the foreign travelers were greeted in the Middle Kingdom with fire hoses and showered disinfectant.’ Quarantine clerks ‘inspected all swine documents’ to see that there were ‘no illegal aliens.’
The ‘porkers were humanely treated and had three in-flight meals during their journey.’ That we should be so lucky! On the other hand – ‘they did not get to see an in-flight movie, nor earn Sky Pearl Club frequent flier miles.’
So pigs do fly! Have a nice year.
Despite draconian measures to restrict hand baggage since the airline bomb scare last month, that still forbid one to bring liquids, whether bottled water or hand lotion, into the cabin on some flights, it is pretty much business as usual when it comes to traveling with pets; an issue of crucial concern to a growing number of readers. While pets and their containers may now be required to pass through an X-ray machine, in addition to a metal detector, Air France (one of the world’s most pet-friendly carriers) still allows cats and dogs of up to 5 kilograms to travel under your seat in the cabin; larger animals are consigned to the hold. British Airways still allows guide dogs to sit next to their owner free of charge; while Virgin Atlantic will welcome dogs, cats and ferrets (in the hold) and award them ‘pet miles.’ KLM hosts pets at an ‘animal hotel’ at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, where they are fed, walked and watered, and their cages cleaned before re-boarding. Humans should be so lucky! Itineraries and choice of airline can depend upon whether you can take a pooch or feline with you on board.
So I was hardly surprised to learn from the American Pet Product Manufacturers Association, Norwalk, Connecticut, that ‘pet travel soared 33 percent last year to a record 80 million and a full 14 percent, or 29 million, Americans travel with their pets.
‘People love their pets, and love being with their pets, and that means hitting the road with them,’ says Leslie Downey, director of communications at TravelersAdvantage.com. ‘The surging trend in pet travel has put more bark in luxury vacations, and airlines and resorts are listening.’
I can hardly wait to take my ferret Joshua on his first flight with Virgin Atlantic, when he can claim his ‘cool limited edition flying jacket and collar tag.’
Meanwhile, I am wrestling with a rising tide of anguished letters from peripatetic pet owners seeking the right airline, and the best route to fly with their pet – vaccination documents and quarantine rules, and arcane rules on certain breeds banned from cargo holds.
The latest pet conundrum arrives from Hans Carl, a reader, recently resident in Montreal-du-Gers, France, who asks how he can bring his ‘hand-fed female green-gold yellow head Amazon’ parrot over from Massachusetts.
‘We have searched for information from American and French veterinary authorities, but have nowhere been able to get firm advice on what is needed,’ Carl says, ‘Can she travel in the cabin (a cat cage does fine)? If not, is the hold safe for a bird?’
Alas, I can find no way for him to bring the bird – short of getting her to talk her way through security and on to a flight, or fit her with a homing device to fly the Atlantic. British Airways, Air France and Virgin Atlantic say they do not fly birds either in the cabin, or in the normal baggage hold, although nobody could explain exactly why (aside from a frivolous suggestion that a parrot might cause a noise disturbance in the cabin, especially if it were to bark commands in a strange tongue).
Warwick Smith, a spokesman at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in Britain (Defra.gov.uk), explained that there is a ‘temporary ban on importing live birds’ into any European Union country until December 2006, because of the risk of spreading avian ‘flu, although there are exceptions in the case of ‘endangered species.’
For advice on pet travel in or from the United States, go to www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dq/faq_animal_importation.htm.
‘You’ve checked in, and printed your boarding card with your seat assignment online; fantastic. You then need to check your bag with an agent; go through passport control; join the queue at security; then present the boarding card and an ID when you board the plane. Each of these processes is being done in self-service mode somewhere in the world. We are trying to corral these to deliver a program to speed the progress of passengers through the airport.’
This is how Paul Behan, program manager for fast travel, at the International Air Transport Association in Geneva, talks about his mission.
Baggage, for example: you first need to register that you intend to check one, two or more bags, either on the Web or a self-service kiosk at the airport. Then you ‘self-tag’ your bags.
‘That’s what is happening in Scandinavia, Germany and Canada; getting the bag to the point ready to go,’ Behan says. ‘You still need an agent for airline liability and security sides, but you can cut the process to about 20 seconds as opposed to the couple of minutes it takes now. However, some pilots are going on in Europe, such as Schiphol, for a totally unmanned baggage drop facility.’
If your bags don’t make it to the other end, instead of standing in line for an agent, you will fill in the data at a kiosk, or an Internet work station, in the baggage hall, print a receipt, and leave without seeing anyone.
The next stage to printing out the boarding card at home will be to check in with your cell phone, or use it as a postbox for a Web check-in. Check in the night before and send it to your mobile. According to Behan, ten airlines enable mobile phone check-in with IATA bar-coded boarding passes.
Cell phones can lessen the misery of hanging around the airport waiting for a delayed flight.
Imagine a snow storm over Chicago with a hundreds of delayed or canceled flights; standing in line at the desk for an agent to help you.
‘We’re looking at mobile technology to send a message to the passenger saying, don’t turn up at the airport at two o’clock but at four; and by the way, here’s your new boarding pass. This is a reality today,’ Behan says. ‘You’ll also be able to use your mobile device as a boarding pass; saves you having to print a bit of paper.’
‘The next step is boarding the plane. In Japan, Scandinavia and Germany, they’re implementing self-boarding gates,’ Behan adds. ‘Think of your metro station. You’ll present your boarding pass either as a piece of paper or mobile with a bar code. There are some challenges with passport checks at the gate; but we are working on that.’
Baggage is the number one reason why travelers do not use self-service options, according to a survey by SITA, a Geneva-based airline communications provider, conducted at six of the world’s busiest airports.
SITA Air Transport World Passenger Self-Service Survey examined the attitudes and habits of a representative sample of the 232 million passengers who use seven international airports: Hartsfield-Jackson, Atlanta; Mumbai International; Charles-de-Gaulle, Paris; Moscow Domodedovo; Sao Paulo Guarulhos and Johannesburg. Interviews with 2,143 travelers representing more than 60 nationalities flying on more than 100 airlines were made at the departure gates during April and May 2008.
The survey confirms that self-service is part of full-service expectations; and airlines are responding with technology giving travelers greater convenience, with power to control their airport experience. Only price (70.5 percent) and flight schedule (63.1 percent) rank above ‘ability to make your own arrangements on the Web’ (42.5 percent).
Overall, 57.6 percent of respondents booked their flight on line, while 36 percent checked in on the Web or at a self-service kiosk. ‘Ease of use’ (72 percent) and ‘time saved’ (60 percent) were the most popular reasons for online booking - plus the fact that the Web makes comparison of the various options easier (56 percent).
‘Baggage is the reason stated by almost half (48.4 percent) of people as the reason for not using self-service check ins when it is available,’ says Dominique El Bez, SITA director, portfolio marketing, ‘seriously detracting from the passenger experience, and limiting the savings and efficiencies made possible by self-service technology. Addressing the baggage dilemma is a key milestone towards achieving our target of 80 percent self-service check-in.’
According to the survey, 47.8 percent of travelers would be willing to use both remote check-in and bag-drop services in the future, and 42.2 percent of them would be willing to pay for them.
A majority of respondents (66.7 percent) would welcome more online functions such as the ability to modify reservations. The ability to use kiosks for flight transfers would be welcomed by 53.8 percent, and for reporting lost baggage claims by 41.8 percent.
The number of travelers willing to use airline Web sites to frequently book other travel components, such as hotels and car rental, is expected to ‘almost double in the coming years’ from the present 11.2 percent.
‘Automated border control and security processing’ would be acceptable to 48.7 percent, while a ‘weighted average’ of 40 percent of travelers would accept the idea of airlines or airports using ‘location sensing technology to guide them through the terminal.’
This is ‘Big Brother’ territory. Radio Frequency Identification Tags linked with a network of high resolution CCTV panoramic cameras around an airport can track the location of any passenger with an accuracy of one square meter, enabling authorities to keep an eye on suspicious individuals, find lost children, ensure that passengers arrive at the gate in time to board their planes, and help evacuate airports in an emergency.
RFID chips work by emitting a short radio message when interrogated by an electronic tag reader. Passengers might be given a wrist band or a boarding pass embedded with a unique ID, cross-referenced to information on the reservations system, such as name and flight number.
The highest acceptance of the idea among respondents was in Sao Paulo (69 percent); the lowest in Paris Charles-de-Gaulle (four percent).
As Benjamin Franklin might have said, ‘In this world nothing can be certain except death and taxes, or having your baggage lost, stolen or mishandled.’ You never know when the law of averages will catch up with you and leave you standing like a dummy as somebody grabs the last piece of baggage from the carousel. Have a great budget meeting!
Which is why veteran road warriors are ‘light travelers;’ having learned never to check bags; better to schlep almost as much stuff a couple of miles to the gate and on to the plane in the form of a giant garment bag, overnight bag-cum-briefcase with telescopic handle and wheels fitted with blades for close combat in the concourse, a laptop, a designer backpack, and a duty-free bag stuffed with reading matter.
You hold it all up with one hand to show how light it is. And they let me on with all of it in Broken Springs, Colorado. Sorry, this is Zurich and the flight is full; you’ll have to check this one, which, of course, will never make your connection in Frankfurt.
You may have a better chance of seeing your bags when you arrive than of receiving that proverbial ‘check in the mail.’
This should be no surprise, according to a new survey by SITA, a leading provider of communications systems to the air transport industry, which finds that the problem of mishandled and lost baggage is worsening on both sides of the Atlantic due to airport congestion, tight turnaround times, more ‘interlining,’ tighter security, and mounting numbers of passengers and bags.
Francesco Violante, SITA’s managing director in Geneva, says, ‘In 2005, the industry lost in the region of $2.5 million on mishandled baggage when you take into account costs involved in reuniting the delayed baggage with its owner, which happily, is the case in more than 99 percent of the time. This year we’ll reach the 2 billion passenger landmark which, on current trends, will translate into 30 million pieces of mishandled baggage this year, of which 204,000 will be lost or stolen.’
Not a lot perhaps, if you are a statistician, considering that an estimated 3 billion bags are circumnavigating the system; but far too many when you think that one of those errant bags might belong to you!
In 2005, the main cause (61 percent) of baggage delay was ‘mishandling’ of bags between connecting flights; failure to load bags (15 percent); ticketing errors/security/mistaking bags at the carousel (9 percent); loading/offloading errors (4 percent); space or weight restrictions, when changing planes during connections (5 percent); mishandling on arrival (3 percent); tagging errors (3 percent).
SITA reports that the average delayed baggage file is open for ‘1.3 days or 31.2 hours’ from when a bag is reported missing to when it is found and restored to its owner.
In Europe last year, 21 percent of flights were delayed and there were problems in baggage delivery for up to 14.1 bags per thousand passengers, compared to 13.9 in 2004, according to the Association of European Airlines; while in the United States, 23 percent of flights were delayed, and six per thousand passengers were victims of mishandled baggage - an increase of 23 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The good news is that SITA is helping to provide common self-service check-in kiosks, and ‘baggage drops,’ at airports for all passengers.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) baggage tags help to solve the problems of mishandled and lost baggage; SITA is developing automated ‘baggage reconciliation’ systems, such as WorldTracer, which is used by 391 airlines and ground-handling companies worldwide,’ providing ‘an inventory which delivers a detailed analysis of the causes of delayed baggage.’
SITA’s BagManager system keeps a constant track of bags and automatically redirects bags that miss their connection on to alternative flights in over 30 of the world’s largest airports.
I look forward to the time when the New Light Traveler is able to relegate most of his or her baggage to the hold, confident that they will meet again when the plane lands.
Meanwhile, here are some ways to beat the baggage blues:
#Check how much hand baggage you can take on board the plane. Airlines have discovered that rationing carry-on baggage by class is a great way to penalize business travelers who travel in the back of the plane. British Airways, typical of the ‘legacy’ carriers, allows first and business-class passengers one bag plus a briefcase (or laptop), total weight, 18 kilos; ‘economy plus’ is the same, but a total weight of 12 kilos; economy passengers are allowed only one bag, total weight of 6 kilos.
#Check whether the ‘weight’ or the ‘piece’ system applies for checked baggage. This depends where you are traveling. Under the weight system, which normally applies within Europe and between Europe and Asia, you are allowed any number of bags as long as the total weight does not exceed 40 kilos in first, 30 kilos in business class and 20 kilos in economy. Piece system rules normally apply between Europe and America and between the Americas and Asia and allow you to check two bags measuring up to 158 centimeters (62 inches) overall and weighing no more than 32 kilograms (70lbs) each. If you are traveling around the world or making side-trips within Africa, Europe or Asia, be very clear on the baggage allowance for all segments.
#Identify bags both inside and out. (An unidentified bag separated from its owner can lead to delays at airports and may even be destroyed as a security risk.) But turn the label to show a blank side through the window of the tag. Do not put your home or even business address on luggage tags: put the name of an associate or travel agent. Tape your real name and address on the inside of the bag.
#Never trust ‘official connecting times’ at transfer airports if you have checked baggage. You may make your plane but the baggage won’t.
#Traveling to the United States, lock your bags with one of two locks approved by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration: Travel Sentry, with a red diamond logo (www.travelsentry.org), and Safe Skies Liberty Lock (www.safeskieslocks.com), with a kind of Olympic torch logo. TSA agents have master keys or combinations to these locks, and say they will try (though not guarantee) to use them during a security inspection.
#Take action right away should your baggage fail to turn up on the carousel. Make sure you fill out a Property Irregularity Report (PIR) with the airline (or its handling agent), and keep a copy. The more accurately you can describe your bag and its contents, the more likely you are to get it back. Make sure the airline knows where to send it. Agree on the spot how much you can spend on essentials, such as underwear and toiletries to tide you over. Don’t be fobbed off with a business-class amenity kit.