United Airlines has finally unveiled their updated pet travel policy which, in an effort to drastically improve the safety of pets traveling in the airline’s cargo holds, makes several changes, including the ban of more than 40 dog breeds from the service.
Following a series of mishaps that included the death of a family pet and several dogs loaded onto the wrong flights last March, United Airlines suspended their pet transportation service pending a complete review and overhaul of their PetSafe® travel program.
The newly updated PetSafe® policy, introduced on May 1, outlines numerous changes to program that become effective on June 18, 2018. Policy changes apply to animals transported within airplane cargo holds.
Among the changes, United Airlines will no longer allow any pets that are not either an accepted dog or cat breed. Prior to the changes, the airline accepted all sorts of animals for cargo shipment. Charles Hobart, a spokesman for United Airlines, told PEOPLE, “…prior to today, we flew all sorts of animals. Geese, foxes, leopards, you name it, we pretty much flew it. That will change moving forward. We’ll only fly dogs and cats as pets that belong to our customers.”
In addition to banning non-dog and -cat pets, the program, which previously only banned 6 dog breeds, now bans over 40 different dogs – including certain mixed-breed dogs, and 4 different cat breeds from cargo travel.
The airline will no longer accept the following list of brachycephalic (or…
