We blogged earlier today about how human airlines such as Southwest and Jetblue are welcoming small dogs on board with their owners, but what about all the other dogs (medium, large, or slightly overweight small dogs) that want to travel?

Dogs boarding the plane

Pet Airways launched a new airline service for animals (dogs and cats for now) in July.  Their motto, “A Pet Airline where pets fly in the main cabin, NOT in cargo!”, allows for animals to fly in a retrofitted plan allowing up to 50 kennels under the care of a veterinary technician.

Pet Airways Cabin.

Currently the service is only available in select cities (LA, Denver, DC, New York and Chicago) based on statistics of the most common destinations where owners travel with their pets.

The topic was posted in Yelp’s San Francisco talk section with mixed reviews.  One advocate wrote, “Its a wonderful and much overdue concept”, while others voiced a different sentiment: “Beginning of the end”, “Overly wasteful and a poor use of resources.  But then again, most of modern society is based upon wastefulness.  All I can do is laugh.”

It will be interesting to track the progress and adoption of this service, which beats putting your beloved dog in the dark and cramped corridors of the cargo.

This weekend, we had a brilliant idea on taking Obi to fly with us for a short airplane trip. It had come to our attention that pets are welcome aboard by airlines such as Southwest and JetBlue. We were pretty excited about it until we looked online and realized that there are plenty of rules and regulations that you must follow.

Obi trying to fly with his ears

I won’t post the policy details here, if you would like to learn more … go here for Southwest’s pet policy and here for JetBlue’s

One of the rules from JetBlue states that a dog must fit inside a 17″L x 12.5″ W x 8″ H carrier and your pet must be able to stand up and move around the carrier with ease.

As much as we were excited to bring Obi on board with us, we’re not sure how he would feel about being stuffed inside a small crate. He is probably just a tad too big for a crate that size. It sounds to me that the airlines only allows small dogs that are under 11 lbs.

Would we bring Obi on board the airplane? Probably not right now
Why? Because his weight and size probably wouldn’t allow him to be comfortable inside the crate and we’re still unsure about how other passengers feel with dogs aboard.

Thoughts and comments on flying with your dogs are welcome