Do Animals Get Oxygen?

CraigD — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 02:28:05 +0000

Here is an interesting company, Pet Airways, that is starting in these questionable economic times. If they succeed, they could prove out two economic principles: 1) people will pay for a service that they desire, and 2) the rich are never affected by down economic times. Though, on this second one, I have a feeling the rich that are unaffected by the down economy fly on private jets and bring their pets on their planes. But that wasn't actually my interest in this company; my question is, do they provide the animals protection in the event of loss of cabin pressure, i.e., do the pets get oxygen? And so I asked them.

Now the reason I thought of this is from my experience in the aerospace oxygen world. I have run into people looking to get oxygen to horses on freighters. The reason for this is that race horses are transported via Fedex, UPS, or other freight transporter. The horses are worth millions of dollars. If, for any reason, the cargo area loses pressurization at altitude, the animals will suffer hypoxia and die.

Since the pets will be kept in the main cabin, I decided to do a quick search to see if I could find anything about pets getting oxygen on traditional airlines when in the cabin. All I could find was this page from Continental Airlines, that simply states:

No oxygen will be administered to a pet in the event of an emergency.

Seems simple enough. It was the only airline I could quickly find with any statement, and I have never heard of airlines carrying animal oxygen masks.

Pet Airways seems big on keeping the animals safe by keeping the animals out of the cargo area and a Pet Attendant monitors and checks the comfort of all passengers every 15 minutes during the flight.

I figured they may actually have something onboard to keep all the animals alive during a loss of cabin pressure. To check on that I sent a message to the company's Twitter account and had the following exchange:

craigd @PetAirways how do you protect the pets against loss of cabin pressure?

PetAirways @craigd you know i dont know answer but i will look into it and see if i can find that answer for you.

craigd @PetAirways thanks; I look forward to the answer.

PetAirways @craigd i looked into it and i believe we are still working on developing those procedures but will have them in place soon

So, that is the answer: they plan on it but don't have anything yet. I actually hope that they do find a way to protect the pets; however, even if they don't, I think that the airline will be a success. They don't charge [currently $150 each way] much more than the traditional airlines, and, yet, the safety and health of the pets seems to be much better. I know I will use them when they start service between Seattle and Kansas City.

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Do Animals Get Oxygen?