My pet died Pet Safe Fly
On March 7th I sent my two little dogs on a Continental Cargo “Pet Safe” trip from San Francisco to Lima, Peru. I paid over $550 to send my dogs there where my brother was going to pick them up at the Lima Airport.They arrived at the Lima Airport at approximately 10:30 PM as planned. However, for reasons that are still unclear to us they were kept in their kennels in the cargo area for the next 3 hours. My brother was there, begging them to give him the dogs.At that point, they turned the dogs over to Peruvian customs and again they just sat. All of their paperwork was in order but no one would turn the dogs over. They were just sitting there in the cargo area in their travel kennels all night. They kept telling my brother that it was their shift change and that they were waiting for someone who works in the daytime to deal with it.At about 10:00 AM they finally agreed to turn the dogs over to my brother. He took the kennels and realized that our French Bulldog was in extreme distress. He immediately saw that she was showing signs of heat stroke. He took a taxi to a nearby veterinarian’s office but within minutes of arriving, she passed away. .We called Continental Cargo with an hour.They would not give me the number for their contacts in Lima. They would not call there for me to find out what happened. They agreed to “investigate” and call me back. They never called back. Nowhere in the transactions did anyone tell us that there would be such enormous problems in Lima. We assumed it would be quick and easy to pick them up.Upon attempting to return with our one surviving dog, Continental Cargo would not even talk to us in Lima. They have a policy there that transactions must go through a third party broker so there is no accountability or specific information. They tried to charge us over $560 to return him to the US plus $300 for the broker! And they required us to leave him at the airport in his crate at 10:00 AM for a flight that leaves at 11:00 PM. There was no flexibility. They seriously required him to be in the crate for 11 hours BEFORE beginning a nine-hour flight. No one could provide any reason for this either.We called Continental Cargo in the US from Lima to try to get some help after all that had happened. They wanted nothing to do with us and suggested that we find another airline to get our dog home. We ended up having to buy a $1,330 ticket on American Airlines to get him home.Continental's “Pet Safe” service is a complete falsehood. There was nothing-pet friendly or safe outside of the US. If they can’t provide their service, they should not do flights to Peru. Nothing about how the Peruvian Customs Service handled them was safe, and Continental can blame the Peruvian systems for our loss but they can’t be trusted to take other peoples’ pets into that environment. She was not just my pet she was my baby too, now after one month we are still grieving for her loss.