mduell

DOT

DudeE

I will add that DOT is extremely responsive to consumer complaints regarding airlines. They will respond to you within days and forward your complaint to the airline. The airline is required to respond to your complaint and copy DOT with its remedy.

Be prepared with documentation and attach it to your complaint. It's not intuitive how a cat develops a broken paw while locked in a crate. Your vet should offer some kind of opinion on how the injury may have occurred.

crackers8199

ugh, great...really wanted to see this reply a few days before our flight

sorry to hear of your problems...i'm hopeful my flight on wednesday will go well.

crackers8199

so, we're here in PA. i gotta say, everything went incredibly smoothly on both ends...the only strange part was dropping them off at the cargo area at LAX. pickup in newark was inside the terminal.

if the return flight ends up being as painless as the flight here was, i will be very happy and impressed...

dparkinson

Flying on UA domestically before LX to take a pet to Europe. Since LX is the MSC, do I pay the LX rate or do I pay separately? It looks like UA doesn't necessarily try to keep the pet on my routing unlike LX.

mduell

It's cargo, not baggage, so MSC doesn't apply.

kettle1

Is the pet traveling cargo or in the plane (under a seat)? It sounds like cargo? If so, you will pay UA.

fastair

Do any carriers interline pets at all? AFAIK, it's 1 airline , pay, fly, reclaim then recheck (and pay again) with another airline....very stressful for animal and not cheap for shipper.

crackers8199

i had such a great experience on our return flight (even amidst some chaos) that i felt the need to update this post in case anyone else is thinking of flying their animals with petsafe - after this trip, i would not hesitate for one second to fly our dogs with united again.

first, the bad (and the cause of most of the chaos, some not petsafe related but i'll tell the entire story for context) - we arrived at newark for our return flight at 12:50 for a 2:50 departure (two hours prior is the recommended check in time for the dogs). petsafe at EWR took over an hour to check the dogs in (by contrast, when we dropped them off at LAX it took about 15 minutes). in addition, this is a big problem at EWR because the petsafe area is inside the terminal...so you can't park there while checking the dogs in. you have to either park in short term parking and carry the dogs from the parking garage (not really feasible with crates and all) or drop the dogs off at the curb (and in this case leave my wife with them), and then go all the way back around the airport loop again to park the car and come back into the airport. we chose the second option - but of course the short term garage for terminal C was full. i had to park in short term for terminal B, then sprint to the air train and get on the train to terminal C, then sprint to petsafe (and do the reverse when going back to get the car and drop it off at the rental area).

anyway, since it took such a long time to check the dogs in (and the fact that for some reason the premier security line at EWR appeared to be longer than the regular line), we ended up missing our original flight by three minutes. after having a near panic attack with the ticket agent at the thought of our dogs flying on a different flight than us (which was something i mentioned earlier in this thread that i was dead set against), she first booked us on the next flight to LAX (only an hour later, no big deal) and then called petsafe to check on our dogs. we were told they were going to check to see if they had already boarded the plane...if they were already on board, they wouldn't take them off and they would just get there an hour ahead of us and be there waiting for us. if they hadn't boarded yet, they'd hold them for an hour and put them on the same (new) flight as us. after a few tense minutes waiting for a call back, the ticket agent walked down the jetway to check herself...she came back and let us know that the dogs would be on the next flight with us. whew.

this is where things got really interesting. when we boarded the next flight, we immediately let the flight attendants know about our situation and that we were supposed to have two dogs on board with us. much like the FA on our flight from LAX-EWR, she was very accommodating and immediately said she would check with the captain.

a few minutes later, a different FA came back to alert us that the captain had checked and they were waiting for the dogs to be brought over from the petsafe area. they actually delayed our flight nearly 15 minutes while we waited for the dogs to be brought over and boarded. twice more we were told by both FAs that both the captain and the first officer had personally gone to check to make sure the dogs were on board before we would push back from the gate. when we finally were ready to push back, the captain even came on and made an announcement apologizing for the delay and explaining that we were without "some very important passengers" and told the story of our pups, which prompted a few laughs and 'awwwws' from the rest of the cabin. both FAs confirmed to us before take off that the dogs were in fact on board with us.

once we were in the air, both FAs stopped by our seats to tell us the interesting story of what really caused the delay - united cargo for some unknown reason wanted to put the dogs on the 5pm flight rather than our 4pm flight. the captain herself argued with petsafe and basically demanded that they be put on the flight with us (why they would even remotely need to make the poor dogs wait in their crates an extra hour when they could just go on the same flight with us is beyond me, but that's a different discussion for another day). about halfway through the flight, one of the business class FAs actually came back to our seat to talk to us...along with what i believe was the first officer's cell phone. he wanted to personally let us know that they were happy to have us on board and let us know that the dogs were safe below - and even showed us pictures on the cell phone that the first officer had personally taken when he went down below earlier to make sure they were on board.

i have reached out to united via twitter in an attempt to get names of the captain and entire crew so that my wife and i can send them all a personal thank you. we were both so thoroughly impressed with the entire experience though, that i felt the need to post it here as well. in a forum that seems to always be bashing everything united, this was truly a wonderful experience from the moment we missed our flrst flight to the time we picked the pups up at the cargo area at LAX (which, by the way, only took about 5 minutes). for all the abuse united takes from a lot of people here, they stepped up big time all the way around for my wife and i the other day.

FragranceMarketingGuy

Help.

Collectively I've been on the phone for over 3+ hours trying to have missing mileage deposited for my dog's flight from TSY to EWR in June.

1) Booked the dog via United Cargo (Pet Safe) and provided my MP number and they assured me it was in the reservation. Of course, it never posted.
2) Called MPSC a month ago and they provided me an individuals name and email to send the appropriate documentation. Done. Never received a response nor was the mileage deposited. Followed-up with another email. Nothing.
3) Just got off the phone with MPSC (over an hour explaining this wasn't a human flying, but a dog) with the respective AWB and Confirmation number. What a waste of time. After an hour, she asked me for the individual's name who was flying.

Does anyone know the 'correct' system/process to have PetSafe mileage deposited. Surely United doesn't even know.

Thanks and Happy Holidays.

-Jim

mherdeg

I think you need to treat this like missing miles from a car rental or promotion bonus — don't say anything about earning miles for a "flight" if you can all avoid it.

"Hi, I'm missing promotional miles from a bonus for using the PetSafe shipping service."

The ad says
If you talk to agents about earning miles for a flight you'll likely enter the trap of having them think about it in terms of the "miles that post after a flight is operated" workflow instead of the "miles that post after a partner sends information" workflow (in this case, the partner is UA).

MSPeconomist

It's being widely reported locally that a Twin Cities family sent Bo, a eight week old Airedale puppy from RDU to MSP on Wednesday (May 17, 2017) connecting in ORD. After waiting for two hours at MSP airport, a UA agent told these people that their new dog was "not here."

Apparently the dog (which was in a kennel that was properly labeled) was put on the flight from RDU to ORD, but upon arrival at ORD, was sent to PHL. UA refused to send the dog directly from PHL back toward MSP and instead sent it next to IAH, where it spent the night, before flying to MSP the next day.

Total time in transit: over 24 hours to get from RDU to MSP the long way around.

Later a UA agent asked the family "so you've been contacted?" but they haven't been contacted by UA or received an apology, although apparently the fee they paid to ship the puppy has been refunded.

The little dog looks exhausted but seems to otherwise be OK. He's cute.

qukslvr619

And this is noteworthy why? Sure you are pointing out that UA sent a dog on a detour, but if not for the countless threads lately of how UA wronged someone (they hate the military, they drag people off planes, now they have a thing against pets) this is hardly unique to UA. Things like this happen everyday at other airlines.

sannmann

Has this gone viral yet? Been covered by a local news channel? Link to local news story or it didn't happen.

chauzer

I was looking into booking a PetSafe reservation (where our dog would fly in cargo) - but saw that you can only make a reservation during the booking window of 30 days to 5 days before the flight. meaning the earliest I can make the reservation is 30 days before my flight.

my concerns would be that 1) the cargo is full for the # of pets they allow, and 2) the aircraft model i'm flying for my reservation doesn't allow pets to be flown in cargo.

i guess the other option is i can always wait until 30 days before the flight to buy my ticket?