One of the most common questions we get asked is “Why can’t dogs be flown to my city?” so, we wanted to have a blog post on exactly why we can only fly to select locations. Importing dogs is a very expensive, complicated and hectic process and determining where dogs can fly depends on various things, mostly finding direct flights to ensure the dogs are safe at all times.
While your city may welcome international flights, most of the time they have connecting flights which is not permitted. If for some reason the connecting flight was missed and the dogs got sent without the volunteer or vice versa, it would be very bad. The only flights we allow are direct flights for this reason and all dogs MUST travel with a person, never in cargo unless a family decides to pay that cost.
Do You Fly Dogs Around the USA?
Once dogs arrive to the USA, we have already had to pay their travel costs from Asia to the USA and can not then pay additional costs to get them other places in the USA. As you can imagine, if we flew every dog places people wanted, we would be in debt. If you are interested in transporting an animal, from our location to your location, 100% of the planning would have to be handled by you and approved by us. We do have various homes that will fly into a city, rent a car and then drive the dog back.
Flying Out Of Korea-
When our dogs leave Korea, they often fly 1-2 dogs at a time, linking to people’s tickets that are already traveling. Dogs from Korea can fly to LAX, JFK, ORD, SFO, and SEA as those are cities that have direct flight options. Your city might also but if we do not have a person flying there, the dogs will not be able to leave, our flights 100% rely on the above combinations lining up perfectly. If you live in any of the above locations it is very easy to get a dog to you with advanced planning. Some cities above are rarer than others, for example, we come across direct flights to SEA less than flights to LAX. LAX is the easiest airport for us to fly to due to how often people travel there.
Flying Out of China-
Flying out of China is the hardest as there are not volunteers set up to take dogs back like Korea has set up. We typically pay for a volunteer to fly from the USA to China just to pick dogs up which costs us about $1300. We then have to pay for the dog’s airfare which is about $500 per dog, not to mention 100% of their vet and prep costs so we are looking at about $700-$1,800 per dog depending on its health and weight. We are already paying for all of the dog’s rescue, flights over, boarding, vetting etc… so we sadly have no additional funds to then deliver dogs to specific cities, incurring more costs.
Most airlines only allow 1-2 dogs per plane but the airline we use allows 5. To maximize our costs getting there, we like to fly 5 at a time which means they have to fly back to one city together which is usually LAX since that is closest to us. If we had a volunteer able to fly to Beijing and bring 5 home, we could possibly arrange 5 to land to JFK or ORD but it would require advanced planning. JFK is also cracking down on dog imports and has been rejecting large amounts so it’s more of a risk to fly dogs there as they can be rejected and end up stuck in quarantine.
As you can see, flying dogs is very hectic so when people ask us why we do not fly certain places, please understand it’s because of the above and not because we are wanting to exclude your city. We also encourage people to pick up dogs at one of the above airports and transport them to your city for foster or adoption.
At the end of the day, we do not profit a single penny off of these dogs and these dogs do not “belong” to us. These dogs are saved from death and we are just doing our best to get them into a safer space.
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