Direct Flights to the UK with Pets!
For those of you who have traveled with pets from the US to the United Kingdom, will know that your flight options were very limited, as the UK has only approved certain airlines and certain routes for their PETS Travel Scheme policy and the Open Skies Agreement between the USA and the European Union. This basically means that your pets must fly on an approved airline and their air route, in order for your pets to be accepted.
To us, when flying live animals, Continental Airlines is the best and really the only airline to operate 'pet friendly' policies to ensure that all their live animals are treated as such. Many airlines claim to offer 'pet friendly' policies, but most of that is just nice marketing efforts. These airlines, except for Continental & KLM, still make your animals wait on the tarmac before and after flights - This causes many weather embargoes and delays, since the heat/cold of the air can affect the well being of the animals who are just sitting on an open tarmac waiting for flights.
In the end, the only airline that truly offers pet friendly policies are Continental & KLM - as they avoid this waiting on the tarmac by keeping all pets in climate controlled areas until it is their time to load or unload.
As a result of their new acceptance into the approved flight plans, all of us moving with pets to/from the UK will have a great option in using Continental for all their pets' travel plans.
Continental will offer twice daily non stop flights to Heathrow from both their New York and Houston hubs.
For more information on importing your pets to the UK, please do visit our country profile pages on
www.petrelocation.com