A Happy Cat-Import Story, LAX-LHR
Mar 25th 2013, 2:11 pm
#1
Misses Los Angeles
Thread Starter
Joined: Dec 2010
Location: London
Posts: 436
A Happy Cat-Import Story, LAX-LHR
Well, we're here! In February, my husband was offered a job in England, and so last week we moved from LA to London.
We're both British, so, in the absence of visa issues, the most stressful aspect of our move was getting the cats over. Looking back, it's not actually that bad a process, but I did get a lot of confusing/contradictory info -- and the bottom line is that you really really want your pets to arrive safely, so of course you want to get everything right and it stresses you out.
I'm going to write up a veeeery long and pedantic account of our experience. Before we flew, I spent ages on this site, and on UK Yankee's pet section, reading through other people's stories. It's nice to know you're not the only one agonizing over Mr Fluffikin's paperwork.
The basic costs of two fat cats, flying with us from LAX to LHR, with no agent:
$1600 shipping with British Airways
$500 vet fees for sorting out paperwork
$40 USDA stamp of approval on paperwork
(and $120 for new kennels)
Flying with BA
We were divided over whether to choose BA or Virgin. I've heard good things about both; in the end, we went BA for a variety of reasons: they had a better flight time, we could get decent one-way ticket deals for ourselves, their pet travel section was easier to call (their operating hours meant I could call until 2pm from the west coast; Virgin's were on UK time, despite being a US number, which meant I always had to get through by 10am.)
BA quoted us, on various phonecalls, between $1400-1600 for the 2 cats in two crates, including all inspection fees at Heathrow. The final cost wasn't actually calculated until we dropped them off; it was $1600.
(In comparison, Virgin quoted $1700 plus about £340 in inspection fees.)
How were BA? Overall, fine:
- they got the cats here safely, so I'm satisfied!
- they have a pet travel department (at BA World Cargo) who pick up the phone and answer questions and are generally helpful.
- they are used to dealing with animals.
- they do 'strongly recommend' you use an agent, but it's not obligatory (unless you're flying OUT of Heathrow; the BA World Cargo there doesn't deal with private customers at all).
Some negatives:
- I get the impression they're still geared more towards dealing with agents. The pet section of their website is quite sparse. I've heard that Virgin are a lot slicker and customer-oriented. With BA, most of your initial info is going to come over the phone; it's not until you book that you get a confirmation email with all the facts.
- we got some varying info about minimum interior kennel size which really stressed me out, as it meant our original kennels might have been an inch or so too small. (The cats had already flown in them from Europe to the US, but that was a more laid-back process.) I'd read enough about people getting turned away at the airport because of relatively minor measurement issues, so this made me nervous, and resulted in two new (and probably unnecessary) kennels being purchased.
- the biggest negative: they gave us the wrong address for the LAX cargo terminal at which we were supposed to drop off our cats. In fairness, the BA World Cargo depot at LAX has recently moved; even Googlemaps still shows the old site. But it's NOT at Aviation Way any more! It's within the Qantas depot at 6555 W. Imperial Highway, five minutes' drive down the road. I live near LAX, and decided to scope out the drop-off before our day of travel, and am so glad I did. The Aviation Way site is part of a very large cargo complex, with scores of different airlines and BA World Cargo still on the sign. I drove in and couldn't find BA anywhere. Asked a security guard; he thought it was somewhere near the DHL depot. Asked at DHL; they thought it was a bit further up. Asked at another airline; was finally told that it had changed address and was not at this site at all. Okay, so I got there in the end, but even without cats it was a confusing 40 minutes of driving around the cargo hinterlands of LAX, and I can only imagine the stress of doing so in a taxi on the day of travel. BA gave the incorrect address on their website (the phone number is at least valid) and on the confirmation email they sent when I booked the cats. When I emailed back to query, they simply said 'yes, it has recently moved' and gave me the new address. No 'oops' or 'sorry'.
The booking process
- with BA, you can only book pets within 14 days of travel. (With Virgin, I think it's 3 months.) I actually preferred the 14 days thing, because we only booked our own flights 3 weeks in advance and it was good to know the pet places couldn't all have been snapped up already.
(Both airlines do recommend you call the pet/cargo department to confirm availability before booking your own tickets. Then, once you've booked your tickets, call back and book the pets.)
- you book the pets over the phone, giving specifications on kennel dimensions and total weight. They estimate the price, and within a few days they send you a confirmation email with lots of info about where to drop-off (hmm) and pick-up. At this point, you have to complete a C5 customs form and fax it to James Cargo at Heathrow, who will be responsible for the cats in between them getting off the plane and into the Animal Reception Centre. If James Cargo don't receive your C5 and confirm it with BA, your booking is automatically cancelled. The C5 form isn't complicated, though, and doesn't need to be stamped/signed by a vet.
- BA have no in-house forms for pet travel; from the US, they require the APHIS 7001 (see below) as an international health certificate, which you'll already need to get pets into the UK.
- you have to check pets in at the cargo depot at least 4 hours before your flight; 5 is safer, as it does take a while for all the paperwork to be processed and attached to the kennels.
Preparing for transit
Our cats are originally from Germany, so they already have the ISO microchips and EU pet passports. We got their rabies shots as soon as we heard we might be moving to London, as the shots must be done at least 21 days in advance. There is currently (March 2013) no titer test or flea/tick/worm treatment requirement for cats.
Basically, cats need to be:
1) microchipped,
2) vaccinated against rabies at least 21 days in advance (they must have been microchipped first),
3) confirmed as fit to travel within 10 days of flight.
The paperwork you need is:
- rabies certificate from administering vet
- (possibly a letter from the vet if there's any ambiguity regarding the microchip implantation pre-dating the rabies shots. We didn't need this as the cats had been microchipped several years prior)
- APHIS 7001 form
- Annex II form
- (pet passports, if you have them)
- C5 customs form (very simple)
Vets and international paperwork
We have a very nice, very reasonably priced local vet who does rabies shots for only $15 -- but once we were dealing with the international paperwork it became clear that this was totally beyond their remit. Even when you get the rabies shots done you need to make sure that key info is recorded on the rabies certificate: DEFRA requires it to show the animal's microchip number, with date of implantation and where it's located on the animal, plus the brand, date given, expiry date and batch number of the vaccine, and the vet needs to sign it and ideally the practice should stamp it.
See:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-pet...s/vaccination/
(If you also have a pet passport, this info also gets recorded on the rabies page.)
The rabies certificate my vet originally offered was basically name of pet and date of vaccine, so this wasn't sufficient. They manually added the necessary details, even though they thought it was all very OTT.
We discussed coming in for the pre-flight health-check paperwork at a later date, but they had never completed the forms before. They were generally a great clinic -- but if you haven't dealt with the international stuff then I don't think you really appreciate how important all the mind-numbing paperwork details are (especially if you're based somewhere like California, where pet import regulations are very relaxed).
So, from a recommendation here, I went to a much larger practice; Santa Monica Pet Medical Center, in case you're in LA. I had a very reassuring phonecall with Karen there, who is absolutely 100% on the ball with international pet travel and has done tons of APHIS forms etc. The downside was that, ouch, it was expensive: $250 per cat for paperwork processing and pre-flight inspection. It was definitely worth it, though: several weeks before we flew, I emailed scans of the cats' passports and rabies certificates to Karen and she got a head start on completing the 7001 and Annex II (I'm not sure if we totally needed the latter, since we already had the passports, but decided to get every single bit of paperwork I could). She noticed straight away that my original vets had inadvertently put different vaccine batch numbers on the rabies certificates and the passports.
(I was doubly glad of going with SMPMC when I approached the old vets to get this corrected; they were really cranky, saying that 'no one cared' about the exact numbers. Yup, that's what it's like importing a pet to England; just slap a post-it on your cat saying 'rabies free' and they'll let him in.)
Anyway. I insisted. They amended the certificates. Karen completed the APHIS 7001 and Annex II forms. We took the cats to SMPMC for a health check within the 10-day pre-flight window, and the vet signed them off with a clean bill of health. I drove down to the USDA office at 7am the next morning to get the 7001 stamped.
In LA, the USDA state veterinarian's office opens at 7:30, but there were already people waiting at 7. It takes 5-15 minutes to process each set of paperwork, so you don't want to get stuck behind a pet agent who has scores of documents. You don't need to take your pet.
The APHIS 7001 must be stamped by *the* USDA state veterinarian's office, not just a vet who is accredited with the USDA. The 10-day pre-travel window is not flexible.
So, the USDA stamped the paperwork without issue (Karen at SMPMC had actually faxed copies of it all to them the previous afternoon, just to check if there were any problems). Back at home, I scanned it all and emailed it to the Heathrow Animal Reception Centre; this isn't a requirement, they'd just suggested this when I'd called up earlier to ask about documents. They got back to me within 48 hours saying it all looked good. At this point, I had:
- 2 x pet passports, containing details of cats' microchips, rabies vaccination record, and fit-to-fly status
- 2 x rabies vaccination certificates from our original vet
- 1 x APHIS 7001 form, signed by SMPMC vet who'd done the pre-flight health-check, and stamped by the USDA state veterinarian. This also served as our international health certificate as required by BA; other airlines may have their own in-house form for you to complete in addition
- 1 x Annex II form, for good measure
- 1 x C5 customs form, already faxed to James Cargo
I made copies of everything to go in my hand luggage. All originals travel with your pets on the day of flight.
Pet carrier/kennel
The trouble with getting the right kennel is that you're dealing with three sets of info: IATA regulations, your airline's regulations, and general online info (a lot of it garnered from pet transport agent sites). In terms of size, it's really important to check what your airline requires, as they can differ significantly. As far as I could work out, the most important things for pets flying cargo are:
- pet's ears must not touch the top of the box
- pet must be able to easily turn around, sit up, lie down
- the kennel must have ventilation on all 4 sides, with one side being a door. Kennels with doors in the roof are not acceptable.
- if it's the kind of kennel that is assembled from two halves, the top and the bottom must be screwed together, not just secured by plastic clips.
(General online consensus is that the screws should be metal, although I'm not sure if that appears in the IATA rules. You can buy little kits of replacement metal screws online if your kennel uses plastic. The Petmate Vari-Kennel I used has metal screws with plastic wingnuts; I bought some replacement metal wingnuts at a hardware store for $2, but didn't end up using them, as no one at BA Cargo mentioned it.)
- food and water dishes must be secured to the inside of the door. I froze some water into the dishes but didn't put in any food.
- absorbent bedding must be placed on the kennel floor (we used old towels). You can put in plenty of blankets, but no toys in the crate.
- the door must be securable with metal pins that engage at least 1.6 cm into the doorframe (any shallower and an agitated pet could shove the door until it popped out).
- Pets shouldn't be able to fit paws and noses through the door/ventilation holes.
- There's no official requirement to have small extra holes around the door for zip-tying it shut, but it does seem like a a good idea; just make sure the holes are very close to the door so there's not too much zip-tie in the kennel interior (ie don't stick the zip-tie through the side ventilation hole to secure the front door, as pets have been known to chew and swallow bits of the plastic).
IATA guidelines can be downloaded from here:
http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/cargo/l...ges/index.aspx
We bought two Petmate Vari-Kennels in Medium, which were acceptable according to all the various size guidelines I'd garnered from BA and the IATA website. The Medium is pretty big for a cat, even our 19-pounders, but the Small Vari-Kennel isn't accepted by BA. I attached ziplocked baggies of dried food to the handle, along with our flight details, and wrote contact names and numbers on the boxes, and applied lots of green LIVE ANIMAL and THIS WAY UP stickers.
If at all possible, buy kennels in person rather than online, as companies seem to have trouble writing up accurate descriptions! I've read a lot of angry reviews from online customers who bought kennels which turned out to be smaller than advertised, or to lack 4-sided ventilation. The pet shops I went into in LA didn't really know about international travel regulations (and so kept trying to sell me soft-sided carriers 'perfect for flights' -- definitely no good for flying cargo) but I could at least check everything out for myself.
The day of travel
We got to the BA World cargo depot 5 hours before the flight.
The BA World Cargo desk is not especially set up for private customers, although everyone was perfectly friendly. It isn't a dedicated pet-shipping area, and all other clients that day were dealing with commercial freight/cargo. It wasn't madly busy, though. The cat boxes were weighed, and the BA cargo rep applied yet more LIVE ANIMAL stickers. She took all our original documents, sealed them into wallets, and taped them to the crates. We signed some more paperwork and paid $1600. My husband wept for the cost. I wept for the cats. The BA rep didn't say anything about zip-tying the door shut, but I'd brought my own zip-ties and did it anyway. Then my husband was given some freight paperwork and was asked to take the cats round to the warehouse next door. There both cats and crates were x-rayed -- BA had informed us that this would happen, and that this was safe for the cats. I took their word for it, as, the previous time we'd flown, it was a horrible experience having to take the cats out of their boxes while the crates were x-rayed. Then we were done, and called another taxi to take us to the terminal. The whole thing took just under an hour.
Arrival
When we were disembarking the plane at LHR, I saw a little van marked BA World Cargo driving away; it turned out the cats were in there. They went straight to the Animal Reception Center (on Beacon Road, near Terminal 4), while we took about an hour to get through baggage reclaim, customs etc. We took a cab to the ARC, with an extremely grumpy driver who didn't really know where it was and blamed us for this. It's only 5 minutes' drive from terminal 5, but it's not well signposted (and when it is, is sometimes referred to as 'Animal Quarantine Station'). BA had emailed me a map, but I hadn't brought it.
At the ARC, we were told that the cats had already arrived, and were in good health, and that it would take an hour or so to process them. I can't say enough good things about the ARC staff: they are very kind, very reassuring, and very good at their jobs! There's a waiting area with sofas and snack machines. You can't actually see your pets until they've been officially processed, but the ARC staff will take them out of their kennels, remove any soiled bedding, and give them food and water.
In the end it took closer to two hours for everything to be finished, but staff came out at regular intervals to keep us updated. We didn't have to pay any further fees, so BA were correct in saying that their price was all-inclusive. Both cats got given official certificates giving them permission to enter the UK, which obviously we'll now have framed as souvenirs of their $1600 journey. Then the cats were brought out to us, along with a black sack containing their damp bedding (mostly just wet from spilled water), and we called another taxi to take us to south London.
A week later, both cats are now doing fine in our new flat. They were unsettled at first, but chilled out again surprisingly quickly, and were eating, drinking and using the litter tray within a few hours. (I'd brought a small new litter tray in my luggage; we filled it with torn-up paper until we got a chance to buy some litter.)
Easy, right? Just don't make me do it again. Twice in 2.5 years is enough for both me and the cats.
Safe travels to you and your pets!
We're both British, so, in the absence of visa issues, the most stressful aspect of our move was getting the cats over. Looking back, it's not actually that bad a process, but I did get a lot of confusing/contradictory info -- and the bottom line is that you really really want your pets to arrive safely, so of course you want to get everything right and it stresses you out.
I'm going to write up a veeeery long and pedantic account of our experience. Before we flew, I spent ages on this site, and on UK Yankee's pet section, reading through other people's stories. It's nice to know you're not the only one agonizing over Mr Fluffikin's paperwork.
The basic costs of two fat cats, flying with us from LAX to LHR, with no agent:
$1600 shipping with British Airways
$500 vet fees for sorting out paperwork
$40 USDA stamp of approval on paperwork
(and $120 for new kennels)
Flying with BA
We were divided over whether to choose BA or Virgin. I've heard good things about both; in the end, we went BA for a variety of reasons: they had a better flight time, we could get decent one-way ticket deals for ourselves, their pet travel section was easier to call (their operating hours meant I could call until 2pm from the west coast; Virgin's were on UK time, despite being a US number, which meant I always had to get through by 10am.)
BA quoted us, on various phonecalls, between $1400-1600 for the 2 cats in two crates, including all inspection fees at Heathrow. The final cost wasn't actually calculated until we dropped them off; it was $1600.
(In comparison, Virgin quoted $1700 plus about £340 in inspection fees.)
How were BA? Overall, fine:
- they got the cats here safely, so I'm satisfied!
- they have a pet travel department (at BA World Cargo) who pick up the phone and answer questions and are generally helpful.
- they are used to dealing with animals.
- they do 'strongly recommend' you use an agent, but it's not obligatory (unless you're flying OUT of Heathrow; the BA World Cargo there doesn't deal with private customers at all).
Some negatives:
- I get the impression they're still geared more towards dealing with agents. The pet section of their website is quite sparse. I've heard that Virgin are a lot slicker and customer-oriented. With BA, most of your initial info is going to come over the phone; it's not until you book that you get a confirmation email with all the facts.
- we got some varying info about minimum interior kennel size which really stressed me out, as it meant our original kennels might have been an inch or so too small. (The cats had already flown in them from Europe to the US, but that was a more laid-back process.) I'd read enough about people getting turned away at the airport because of relatively minor measurement issues, so this made me nervous, and resulted in two new (and probably unnecessary) kennels being purchased.
- the biggest negative: they gave us the wrong address for the LAX cargo terminal at which we were supposed to drop off our cats. In fairness, the BA World Cargo depot at LAX has recently moved; even Googlemaps still shows the old site. But it's NOT at Aviation Way any more! It's within the Qantas depot at 6555 W. Imperial Highway, five minutes' drive down the road. I live near LAX, and decided to scope out the drop-off before our day of travel, and am so glad I did. The Aviation Way site is part of a very large cargo complex, with scores of different airlines and BA World Cargo still on the sign. I drove in and couldn't find BA anywhere. Asked a security guard; he thought it was somewhere near the DHL depot. Asked at DHL; they thought it was a bit further up. Asked at another airline; was finally told that it had changed address and was not at this site at all. Okay, so I got there in the end, but even without cats it was a confusing 40 minutes of driving around the cargo hinterlands of LAX, and I can only imagine the stress of doing so in a taxi on the day of travel. BA gave the incorrect address on their website (the phone number is at least valid) and on the confirmation email they sent when I booked the cats. When I emailed back to query, they simply said 'yes, it has recently moved' and gave me the new address. No 'oops' or 'sorry'.
The booking process
- with BA, you can only book pets within 14 days of travel. (With Virgin, I think it's 3 months.) I actually preferred the 14 days thing, because we only booked our own flights 3 weeks in advance and it was good to know the pet places couldn't all have been snapped up already.
(Both airlines do recommend you call the pet/cargo department to confirm availability before booking your own tickets. Then, once you've booked your tickets, call back and book the pets.)
- you book the pets over the phone, giving specifications on kennel dimensions and total weight. They estimate the price, and within a few days they send you a confirmation email with lots of info about where to drop-off (hmm) and pick-up. At this point, you have to complete a C5 customs form and fax it to James Cargo at Heathrow, who will be responsible for the cats in between them getting off the plane and into the Animal Reception Centre. If James Cargo don't receive your C5 and confirm it with BA, your booking is automatically cancelled. The C5 form isn't complicated, though, and doesn't need to be stamped/signed by a vet.
- BA have no in-house forms for pet travel; from the US, they require the APHIS 7001 (see below) as an international health certificate, which you'll already need to get pets into the UK.
- you have to check pets in at the cargo depot at least 4 hours before your flight; 5 is safer, as it does take a while for all the paperwork to be processed and attached to the kennels.
Preparing for transit
Our cats are originally from Germany, so they already have the ISO microchips and EU pet passports. We got their rabies shots as soon as we heard we might be moving to London, as the shots must be done at least 21 days in advance. There is currently (March 2013) no titer test or flea/tick/worm treatment requirement for cats.
Basically, cats need to be:
1) microchipped,
2) vaccinated against rabies at least 21 days in advance (they must have been microchipped first),
3) confirmed as fit to travel within 10 days of flight.
The paperwork you need is:
- rabies certificate from administering vet
- (possibly a letter from the vet if there's any ambiguity regarding the microchip implantation pre-dating the rabies shots. We didn't need this as the cats had been microchipped several years prior)
- APHIS 7001 form
- Annex II form
- (pet passports, if you have them)
- C5 customs form (very simple)
Vets and international paperwork
We have a very nice, very reasonably priced local vet who does rabies shots for only $15 -- but once we were dealing with the international paperwork it became clear that this was totally beyond their remit. Even when you get the rabies shots done you need to make sure that key info is recorded on the rabies certificate: DEFRA requires it to show the animal's microchip number, with date of implantation and where it's located on the animal, plus the brand, date given, expiry date and batch number of the vaccine, and the vet needs to sign it and ideally the practice should stamp it.
See:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-pet...s/vaccination/
(If you also have a pet passport, this info also gets recorded on the rabies page.)
The rabies certificate my vet originally offered was basically name of pet and date of vaccine, so this wasn't sufficient. They manually added the necessary details, even though they thought it was all very OTT.
We discussed coming in for the pre-flight health-check paperwork at a later date, but they had never completed the forms before. They were generally a great clinic -- but if you haven't dealt with the international stuff then I don't think you really appreciate how important all the mind-numbing paperwork details are (especially if you're based somewhere like California, where pet import regulations are very relaxed).
So, from a recommendation here, I went to a much larger practice; Santa Monica Pet Medical Center, in case you're in LA. I had a very reassuring phonecall with Karen there, who is absolutely 100% on the ball with international pet travel and has done tons of APHIS forms etc. The downside was that, ouch, it was expensive: $250 per cat for paperwork processing and pre-flight inspection. It was definitely worth it, though: several weeks before we flew, I emailed scans of the cats' passports and rabies certificates to Karen and she got a head start on completing the 7001 and Annex II (I'm not sure if we totally needed the latter, since we already had the passports, but decided to get every single bit of paperwork I could). She noticed straight away that my original vets had inadvertently put different vaccine batch numbers on the rabies certificates and the passports.
(I was doubly glad of going with SMPMC when I approached the old vets to get this corrected; they were really cranky, saying that 'no one cared' about the exact numbers. Yup, that's what it's like importing a pet to England; just slap a post-it on your cat saying 'rabies free' and they'll let him in.)
Anyway. I insisted. They amended the certificates. Karen completed the APHIS 7001 and Annex II forms. We took the cats to SMPMC for a health check within the 10-day pre-flight window, and the vet signed them off with a clean bill of health. I drove down to the USDA office at 7am the next morning to get the 7001 stamped.
In LA, the USDA state veterinarian's office opens at 7:30, but there were already people waiting at 7. It takes 5-15 minutes to process each set of paperwork, so you don't want to get stuck behind a pet agent who has scores of documents. You don't need to take your pet.
The APHIS 7001 must be stamped by *the* USDA state veterinarian's office, not just a vet who is accredited with the USDA. The 10-day pre-travel window is not flexible.
So, the USDA stamped the paperwork without issue (Karen at SMPMC had actually faxed copies of it all to them the previous afternoon, just to check if there were any problems). Back at home, I scanned it all and emailed it to the Heathrow Animal Reception Centre; this isn't a requirement, they'd just suggested this when I'd called up earlier to ask about documents. They got back to me within 48 hours saying it all looked good. At this point, I had:
- 2 x pet passports, containing details of cats' microchips, rabies vaccination record, and fit-to-fly status
- 2 x rabies vaccination certificates from our original vet
- 1 x APHIS 7001 form, signed by SMPMC vet who'd done the pre-flight health-check, and stamped by the USDA state veterinarian. This also served as our international health certificate as required by BA; other airlines may have their own in-house form for you to complete in addition
- 1 x Annex II form, for good measure
- 1 x C5 customs form, already faxed to James Cargo
I made copies of everything to go in my hand luggage. All originals travel with your pets on the day of flight.
Pet carrier/kennel
The trouble with getting the right kennel is that you're dealing with three sets of info: IATA regulations, your airline's regulations, and general online info (a lot of it garnered from pet transport agent sites). In terms of size, it's really important to check what your airline requires, as they can differ significantly. As far as I could work out, the most important things for pets flying cargo are:
- pet's ears must not touch the top of the box
- pet must be able to easily turn around, sit up, lie down
- the kennel must have ventilation on all 4 sides, with one side being a door. Kennels with doors in the roof are not acceptable.
- if it's the kind of kennel that is assembled from two halves, the top and the bottom must be screwed together, not just secured by plastic clips.
(General online consensus is that the screws should be metal, although I'm not sure if that appears in the IATA rules. You can buy little kits of replacement metal screws online if your kennel uses plastic. The Petmate Vari-Kennel I used has metal screws with plastic wingnuts; I bought some replacement metal wingnuts at a hardware store for $2, but didn't end up using them, as no one at BA Cargo mentioned it.)
- food and water dishes must be secured to the inside of the door. I froze some water into the dishes but didn't put in any food.
- absorbent bedding must be placed on the kennel floor (we used old towels). You can put in plenty of blankets, but no toys in the crate.
- the door must be securable with metal pins that engage at least 1.6 cm into the doorframe (any shallower and an agitated pet could shove the door until it popped out).
- Pets shouldn't be able to fit paws and noses through the door/ventilation holes.
- There's no official requirement to have small extra holes around the door for zip-tying it shut, but it does seem like a a good idea; just make sure the holes are very close to the door so there's not too much zip-tie in the kennel interior (ie don't stick the zip-tie through the side ventilation hole to secure the front door, as pets have been known to chew and swallow bits of the plastic).
IATA guidelines can be downloaded from here:
http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/cargo/l...ges/index.aspx
We bought two Petmate Vari-Kennels in Medium, which were acceptable according to all the various size guidelines I'd garnered from BA and the IATA website. The Medium is pretty big for a cat, even our 19-pounders, but the Small Vari-Kennel isn't accepted by BA. I attached ziplocked baggies of dried food to the handle, along with our flight details, and wrote contact names and numbers on the boxes, and applied lots of green LIVE ANIMAL and THIS WAY UP stickers.
If at all possible, buy kennels in person rather than online, as companies seem to have trouble writing up accurate descriptions! I've read a lot of angry reviews from online customers who bought kennels which turned out to be smaller than advertised, or to lack 4-sided ventilation. The pet shops I went into in LA didn't really know about international travel regulations (and so kept trying to sell me soft-sided carriers 'perfect for flights' -- definitely no good for flying cargo) but I could at least check everything out for myself.
The day of travel
We got to the BA World cargo depot 5 hours before the flight.
The BA World Cargo desk is not especially set up for private customers, although everyone was perfectly friendly. It isn't a dedicated pet-shipping area, and all other clients that day were dealing with commercial freight/cargo. It wasn't madly busy, though. The cat boxes were weighed, and the BA cargo rep applied yet more LIVE ANIMAL stickers. She took all our original documents, sealed them into wallets, and taped them to the crates. We signed some more paperwork and paid $1600. My husband wept for the cost. I wept for the cats. The BA rep didn't say anything about zip-tying the door shut, but I'd brought my own zip-ties and did it anyway. Then my husband was given some freight paperwork and was asked to take the cats round to the warehouse next door. There both cats and crates were x-rayed -- BA had informed us that this would happen, and that this was safe for the cats. I took their word for it, as, the previous time we'd flown, it was a horrible experience having to take the cats out of their boxes while the crates were x-rayed. Then we were done, and called another taxi to take us to the terminal. The whole thing took just under an hour.
Arrival
When we were disembarking the plane at LHR, I saw a little van marked BA World Cargo driving away; it turned out the cats were in there. They went straight to the Animal Reception Center (on Beacon Road, near Terminal 4), while we took about an hour to get through baggage reclaim, customs etc. We took a cab to the ARC, with an extremely grumpy driver who didn't really know where it was and blamed us for this. It's only 5 minutes' drive from terminal 5, but it's not well signposted (and when it is, is sometimes referred to as 'Animal Quarantine Station'). BA had emailed me a map, but I hadn't brought it.
At the ARC, we were told that the cats had already arrived, and were in good health, and that it would take an hour or so to process them. I can't say enough good things about the ARC staff: they are very kind, very reassuring, and very good at their jobs! There's a waiting area with sofas and snack machines. You can't actually see your pets until they've been officially processed, but the ARC staff will take them out of their kennels, remove any soiled bedding, and give them food and water.
In the end it took closer to two hours for everything to be finished, but staff came out at regular intervals to keep us updated. We didn't have to pay any further fees, so BA were correct in saying that their price was all-inclusive. Both cats got given official certificates giving them permission to enter the UK, which obviously we'll now have framed as souvenirs of their $1600 journey. Then the cats were brought out to us, along with a black sack containing their damp bedding (mostly just wet from spilled water), and we called another taxi to take us to south London.
A week later, both cats are now doing fine in our new flat. They were unsettled at first, but chilled out again surprisingly quickly, and were eating, drinking and using the litter tray within a few hours. (I'd brought a small new litter tray in my luggage; we filled it with torn-up paper until we got a chance to buy some litter.)
Easy, right? Just don't make me do it again. Twice in 2.5 years is enough for both me and the cats.
Safe travels to you and your pets!
Mar 25th 2013, 3:23 pm
#2
The Kwisatz Haderach
Joined: Aug 2008
Location: North Wales
Posts: 8,080
Re: A Happy Cat-Import Story, LAX-LHR
Wow that is a wonderful post, well done.
Mar 25th 2013, 5:59 pm
#3
BE Enthusiast
Joined: Aug 2008
Location: Wirral, UK
Posts: 402
Re: A Happy Cat-Import Story, LAX-LHR
I've printed this out to read in more detail when I get home.
I have 3 (not so fat cats) and a dog to transport from Philadelphia to Manchester UK and have been stressing about it for a while now. I have been in touch with an animal transporting company who are incredibly helpful, but having read this posting I may contact BA just to see how much I will save if I do it myself.
Thank you for such a detailed post though, it came at just the right time for me
I have 3 (not so fat cats) and a dog to transport from Philadelphia to Manchester UK and have been stressing about it for a while now. I have been in touch with an animal transporting company who are incredibly helpful, but having read this posting I may contact BA just to see how much I will save if I do it myself.
Thank you for such a detailed post though, it came at just the right time for me
Mar 25th 2013, 6:02 pm
#4
BE Enthusiast
Joined: Oct 2010
Location: Marlow
Posts: 605
Re: A Happy Cat-Import Story, LAX-LHR
Thanks God that everything went well and you are now all safe and sound 
What a stress it must have been for you !
In advance, Happy Easter to your little animal knigdom !
What a stress it must have been for you !
In advance, Happy Easter to your little animal knigdom !
Mar 25th 2013, 6:24 pm
#5
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Nov 2010
Posts: 4,100
Re: A Happy Cat-Import Story, LAX-LHR
I've printed this out to read in more detail when I get home.
I have 3 (not so fat cats) and a dog to transport from Philadelphia to Manchester UK and have been stressing about it for a while now. I have been in touch with an animal transporting company who are incredibly helpful, but having read this posting I may contact BA just to see how much I will save if I do it myself.
Thank you for such a detailed post though, it came at just the right time for me
I have 3 (not so fat cats) and a dog to transport from Philadelphia to Manchester UK and have been stressing about it for a while now. I have been in touch with an animal transporting company who are incredibly helpful, but having read this posting I may contact BA just to see how much I will save if I do it myself.
Thank you for such a detailed post though, it came at just the right time for me
I have two small dogs and two cats, so I saved Moshi's post, too (copy and paste). I fully expect I will be a nervous wreck by the date I fly back with them and will worry every minute about them while on the plane. It will be a year or so before I go back - unless a miracle happens - but as I read Moshi's post, I could feel the stress mounting already 
- but also the eager anticipation of that day when I finally leave the USA 
I just have to be very patient. It will come Moshi - glad to hear all of you got back safe and sound and that kitties have settled in well.
Did you tranquilize the pets before the flight? I have heard in the past that some people have done it and others haven't. Of course, I haven't asked the vet what he recommends yet, but I'd like to know what others have done to keep their pets calm before travel. I can just imagine the din my cats will make before travel - or perhaps not. They may be too overwhelmed by it all and too scared to make a sound.
PS: Was it hard to leave Santa Monica? It's lovely there - and Santa Barabara, Monterey and Carmel. Still not the UK, though
Last edited by windsong; Mar 25th 2013 at 6:26 pm.
Mar 25th 2013, 7:54 pm
#6
Misses Los Angeles
Thread Starter
Joined: Dec 2010
Location: London
Posts: 436
Re: A Happy Cat-Import Story, LAX-LHR
I fully expect I will be a nervous wreck by the date I fly back with them and will worry every minute about them while on the plane. It will be a year or so before I go back - unless a miracle happens - but as I read Moshi's post, I could feel the stress mounting already - but also the eager anticipation of that day when I finally leave the USA I just have to be very patient. It will come
- but also the eager anticipation of that day when I finally leave the USA I just have to be very patient. It will come Did you tranquilize the pets before the flight? I have heard in the past that some people have done it and others haven't. Of course, I haven't asked the vet what he recommends yet, but I'd like to know what others have done to keep their pets calm before travel. I can just imagine the din my cats will make before travel - or perhaps not. They may be too overwhelmed by it all and too scared to make a sound.
PS: Was it hard to leave Santa Monica? It's lovely there - and Santa Barabara, Monterey and Carmel. Still not the UK, though
PS: Was it hard to leave Santa Monica? It's lovely there - and Santa Barabara, Monterey and Carmel. Still not the UK, though
It was so hard to leave Santa Monica! Especially as the weather is so bitterly cold here. Luckily we have gas central heating in the flat and a nice warm pub down the road, otherwise I'd be crying to fly back to California, cats and all.
Mar 26th 2013, 1:51 am
#7
BE Enthusiast
Joined: Aug 2008
Location: Wirral, UK
Posts: 402
Re: A Happy Cat-Import Story, LAX-LHR
You have a herd of animals, just like me I have two small dogs and two cats, so I saved Moshi's post, too (copy and paste). I fully expect I will be a nervous wreck by the date I fly back with them and will worry every minute about them while on the plane. It will be a year or so before I go back - unless a miracle happens - but as I read Moshi's post, I could feel the stress mounting already - but also the eager anticipation of that day when I finally leave the USA I just have to be very patient. It will come
I have two small dogs and two cats, so I saved Moshi's post, too (copy and paste). I fully expect I will be a nervous wreck by the date I fly back with them and will worry every minute about them while on the plane. It will be a year or so before I go back - unless a miracle happens - but as I read Moshi's post, I could feel the stress mounting already - but also the eager anticipation of that day when I finally leave the USA I just have to be very patient. It will come 
. Working full time 6 days a week doesn't give me much time at all either.Hopefully through all of this, I won't have time to eat and will therefore arrive in England with the physique of a supermodel, albeit an aged dishevelled one !
Mar 26th 2013, 8:19 am
#8
Finally Home!
Joined: Mar 2010
Location: Used to be New York, now North Yorkshire
Posts: 3,610
Re: A Happy Cat-Import Story, LAX-LHR
So glad it all worked out for you as I remember how worried you were.
And welcome home!!
Windsong, our airline specifically said no to tranquilizing the animals. Too many die as a result and so it's just not worth the risk. If you find a vet who tells you it's OK, I'd stop using that vet!
And welcome home!!
Windsong, our airline specifically said no to tranquilizing the animals. Too many die as a result and so it's just not worth the risk. If you find a vet who tells you it's OK, I'd stop using that vet!
Last edited by sallysimmons; Mar 26th 2013 at 8:21 am.
Mar 26th 2013, 11:09 am
#9
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Nov 2010
Posts: 4,100
Re: A Happy Cat-Import Story, LAX-LHR
So glad it all worked out for you as I remember how worried you were.
And welcome home!!
Windsong, our airline specifically said no to tranquilizing the animals. Too many die as a result and so it's just not worth the risk. If you find a vet who tells you it's OK, I'd stop using that vet!
And welcome home!!
Windsong, our airline specifically said no to tranquilizing the animals. Too many die as a result and so it's just not worth the risk. If you find a vet who tells you it's OK, I'd stop using that vet!
Mar 26th 2013, 7:35 pm
#10
Just Joined
Joined: Jan 2007
Location: France/UK
Posts: 6
Re: A Happy Cat-Import Story, LAX-LHR
Hi
What a great post. We have just come back with our two Siamese, one very large and the other quite small.
We decided to use an agency which was very expensive but did take care of many of the arrangements. However we still had to get all the usual vet forms signed.
One thing I would say is find out exactly where the USDA office is well in advance. You cannot send the form to them electronically and they are quite difficult To find on the Internet and phone. If you live in a small state remember that the office could be a long way away.
In our case (Alabama) it was in Montgomery which is about an 8 hour round trip from Huntsville where we were. A major panic ensued but the agent finally got that sorted. We also had to fill in more forms because the cats changed planes in Georgia.
Collecting them in HRW was easy and they travelled home with no crying. They were totally settled in very quickly but freaked as soon as our boxes arrived in the house!
Some silly things like Delta no longer taking animals because they currently use 767s led to us choosing an agent but I would certainly do it myself if I had to do it again.
The funniest thing is that they provided the largest carriers you can imagine, much too large to use to take them to the vets! Another funny thing was watching people greet their cats at the ARC, the animals were all quiet until they saw their 'parents' then they all cried. How sweet.
What a great post. We have just come back with our two Siamese, one very large and the other quite small.
We decided to use an agency which was very expensive but did take care of many of the arrangements. However we still had to get all the usual vet forms signed.
One thing I would say is find out exactly where the USDA office is well in advance. You cannot send the form to them electronically and they are quite difficult To find on the Internet and phone. If you live in a small state remember that the office could be a long way away.
In our case (Alabama) it was in Montgomery which is about an 8 hour round trip from Huntsville where we were. A major panic ensued but the agent finally got that sorted. We also had to fill in more forms because the cats changed planes in Georgia.
Collecting them in HRW was easy and they travelled home with no crying. They were totally settled in very quickly but freaked as soon as our boxes arrived in the house!
Some silly things like Delta no longer taking animals because they currently use 767s led to us choosing an agent but I would certainly do it myself if I had to do it again.
The funniest thing is that they provided the largest carriers you can imagine, much too large to use to take them to the vets! Another funny thing was watching people greet their cats at the ARC, the animals were all quiet until they saw their 'parents' then they all cried. How sweet.
Mar 26th 2013, 8:13 pm
#11
BE Enthusiast
Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 361
Re: A Happy Cat-Import Story, LAX-LHR
Well, that and sleeping for about a fortnight!
Mar 26th 2013, 9:34 pm
#12
Yorkshire Lass
Joined: Feb 2013
Location: West Yorkshire
Posts: 1,416
Re: A Happy Cat-Import Story, LAX-LHR
Have a safe trip!
Mar 26th 2013, 9:35 pm
#13
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Nov 2010
Posts: 4,100
Re: A Happy Cat-Import Story, LAX-LHR
Mar 27th 2013, 12:47 am
#14
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Joined: Aug 2008
Location: Wirral, UK
Posts: 402
Re: A Happy Cat-Import Story, LAX-LHR
just curious about you saying you'd do it yourself if faced with transporting your pets again. Did you find the agency to be a waste of money or just not as helpful as you'd assumed. I've been quoted by an agency $6000 for 3 cats and 1 dog and didn't think this was too extortionate. I tried googling the airline prices directly and seemed to come up with about $1200-$1400 per animal. Not sure if I'd save a huge amount doing it on my own, so maybe I ought to ring BA directly to ask.
I think I'm just being a big ninny by not doing it myself, I'm sure I could as many others have on here.
Mar 27th 2013, 1:02 am
#15
Firetrak
Joined: Mar 2004
Posts: 577
Re: A Happy Cat-Import Story, LAX-LHR
Well, we're here! In February, my husband was offered a job in England, and so last week we moved from LA to London.
We're both British, so, in the absence of visa issues, the most stressful aspect of our move was getting the cats over. Looking back, it's not actually that bad a process, but I did get a lot of confusing/contradictory info -- and the bottom line is that you really really want your pets to arrive safely, so of course you want to get everything right and it stresses you out.
I'm going to write up a veeeery long and pedantic account of our experience. Before we flew, I spent ages on this site, and on UK Yankee's pet section, reading through other people's stories. It's nice to know you're not the only one agonizing over Mr Fluffikin's paperwork.
The basic costs of two fat cats, flying with us from LAX to LHR, with no agent:
$1600 shipping with British Airways
$500 vet fees for sorting out paperwork
$40 USDA stamp of approval on paperwork
(and $120 for new kennels)
Flying with BA
We were divided over whether to choose BA or Virgin. I've heard good things about both; in the end, we went BA for a variety of reasons: they had a better flight time, we could get decent one-way ticket deals for ourselves, their pet travel section was easier to call (their operating hours meant I could call until 2pm from the west coast; Virgin's were on UK time, despite being a US number, which meant I always had to get through by 10am.)
BA quoted us, on various phonecalls, between $1400-1600 for the 2 cats in two crates, including all inspection fees at Heathrow. The final cost wasn't actually calculated until we dropped them off; it was $1600.
(In comparison, Virgin quoted $1700 plus about £340 in inspection fees.)
How were BA? Overall, fine:
- they got the cats here safely, so I'm satisfied!
- they have a pet travel department (at BA World Cargo) who pick up the phone and answer questions and are generally helpful.
- they are used to dealing with animals.
- they do 'strongly recommend' you use an agent, but it's not obligatory (unless you're flying OUT of Heathrow; the BA World Cargo there doesn't deal with private customers at all).
Some negatives:
- I get the impression they're still geared more towards dealing with agents. The pet section of their website is quite sparse. I've heard that Virgin are a lot slicker and customer-oriented. With BA, most of your initial info is going to come over the phone; it's not until you book that you get a confirmation email with all the facts.
- we got some varying info about minimum interior kennel size which really stressed me out, as it meant our original kennels might have been an inch or so too small. (The cats had already flown in them from Europe to the US, but that was a more laid-back process.) I'd read enough about people getting turned away at the airport because of relatively minor measurement issues, so this made me nervous, and resulted in two new (and probably unnecessary) kennels being purchased.
- the biggest negative: they gave us the wrong address for the LAX cargo terminal at which we were supposed to drop off our cats. In fairness, the BA World Cargo depot at LAX has recently moved; even Googlemaps still shows the old site. But it's NOT at Aviation Way any more! It's within the Qantas depot at 6555 W. Imperial Highway, five minutes' drive down the road. I live near LAX, and decided to scope out the drop-off before our day of travel, and am so glad I did. The Aviation Way site is part of a very large cargo complex, with scores of different airlines and BA World Cargo still on the sign. I drove in and couldn't find BA anywhere. Asked a security guard; he thought it was somewhere near the DHL depot. Asked at DHL; they thought it was a bit further up. Asked at another airline; was finally told that it had changed address and was not at this site at all. Okay, so I got there in the end, but even without cats it was a confusing 40 minutes of driving around the cargo hinterlands of LAX, and I can only imagine the stress of doing so in a taxi on the day of travel. BA gave the incorrect address on their website (the phone number is at least valid) and on the confirmation email they sent when I booked the cats. When I emailed back to query, they simply said 'yes, it has recently moved' and gave me the new address. No 'oops' or 'sorry'.
The booking process
- with BA, you can only book pets within 14 days of travel. (With Virgin, I think it's 3 months.) I actually preferred the 14 days thing, because we only booked our own flights 3 weeks in advance and it was good to know the pet places couldn't all have been snapped up already.
(Both airlines do recommend you call the pet/cargo department to confirm availability before booking your own tickets. Then, once you've booked your tickets, call back and book the pets.)
- you book the pets over the phone, giving specifications on kennel dimensions and total weight. They estimate the price, and within a few days they send you a confirmation email with lots of info about where to drop-off (hmm) and pick-up. At this point, you have to complete a C5 customs form and fax it to James Cargo at Heathrow, who will be responsible for the cats in between them getting off the plane and into the Animal Reception Centre. If James Cargo don't receive your C5 and confirm it with BA, your booking is automatically cancelled. The C5 form isn't complicated, though, and doesn't need to be stamped/signed by a vet.
- BA have no in-house forms for pet travel; from the US, they require the APHIS 7001 (see below) as an international health certificate, which you'll already need to get pets into the UK.
- you have to check pets in at the cargo depot at least 4 hours before your flight; 5 is safer, as it does take a while for all the paperwork to be processed and attached to the kennels.
Preparing for transit
Our cats are originally from Germany, so they already have the ISO microchips and EU pet passports. We got their rabies shots as soon as we heard we might be moving to London, as the shots must be done at least 21 days in advance. There is currently (March 2013) no titer test or flea/tick/worm treatment requirement for cats.
Basically, cats need to be:
1) microchipped,
2) vaccinated against rabies at least 21 days in advance (they must have been microchipped first),
3) confirmed as fit to travel within 10 days of flight.
The paperwork you need is:
- rabies certificate from administering vet
- (possibly a letter from the vet if there's any ambiguity regarding the microchip implantation pre-dating the rabies shots. We didn't need this as the cats had been microchipped several years prior)
- APHIS 7001 form
- Annex II form
- (pet passports, if you have them)
- C5 customs form (very simple)
Vets and international paperwork
We have a very nice, very reasonably priced local vet who does rabies shots for only $15 -- but once we were dealing with the international paperwork it became clear that this was totally beyond their remit. Even when you get the rabies shots done you need to make sure that key info is recorded on the rabies certificate: DEFRA requires it to show the animal's microchip number, with date of implantation and where it's located on the animal, plus the brand, date given, expiry date and batch number of the vaccine, and the vet needs to sign it and ideally the practice should stamp it.
See:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-pet...s/vaccination/
(If you also have a pet passport, this info also gets recorded on the rabies page.)
The rabies certificate my vet originally offered was basically name of pet and date of vaccine, so this wasn't sufficient. They manually added the necessary details, even though they thought it was all very OTT.
We discussed coming in for the pre-flight health-check paperwork at a later date, but they had never completed the forms before. They were generally a great clinic -- but if you haven't dealt with the international stuff then I don't think you really appreciate how important all the mind-numbing paperwork details are (especially if you're based somewhere like California, where pet import regulations are very relaxed).
So, from a recommendation here, I went to a much larger practice; Santa Monica Pet Medical Center, in case you're in LA. I had a very reassuring phonecall with Karen there, who is absolutely 100% on the ball with international pet travel and has done tons of APHIS forms etc. The downside was that, ouch, it was expensive: $250 per cat for paperwork processing and pre-flight inspection. It was definitely worth it, though: several weeks before we flew, I emailed scans of the cats' passports and rabies certificates to Karen and she got a head start on completing the 7001 and Annex II (I'm not sure if we totally needed the latter, since we already had the passports, but decided to get every single bit of paperwork I could). She noticed straight away that my original vets had inadvertently put different vaccine batch numbers on the rabies certificates and the passports.
(I was doubly glad of going with SMPMC when I approached the old vets to get this corrected; they were really cranky, saying that 'no one cared' about the exact numbers. Yup, that's what it's like importing a pet to England; just slap a post-it on your cat saying 'rabies free' and they'll let him in.)
Anyway. I insisted. They amended the certificates. Karen completed the APHIS 7001 and Annex II forms. We took the cats to SMPMC for a health check within the 10-day pre-flight window, and the vet signed them off with a clean bill of health. I drove down to the USDA office at 7am the next morning to get the 7001 stamped.
In LA, the USDA state veterinarian's office opens at 7:30, but there were already people waiting at 7. It takes 5-15 minutes to process each set of paperwork, so you don't want to get stuck behind a pet agent who has scores of documents. You don't need to take your pet.
The APHIS 7001 must be stamped by *the* USDA state veterinarian's office, not just a vet who is accredited with the USDA. The 10-day pre-travel window is not flexible.
So, the USDA stamped the paperwork without issue (Karen at SMPMC had actually faxed copies of it all to them the previous afternoon, just to check if there were any problems). Back at home, I scanned it all and emailed it to the Heathrow Animal Reception Centre; this isn't a requirement, they'd just suggested this when I'd called up earlier to ask about documents. They got back to me within 48 hours saying it all looked good. At this point, I had:
- 2 x pet passports, containing details of cats' microchips, rabies vaccination record, and fit-to-fly status
- 2 x rabies vaccination certificates from our original vet
- 1 x APHIS 7001 form, signed by SMPMC vet who'd done the pre-flight health-check, and stamped by the USDA state veterinarian. This also served as our international health certificate as required by BA; other airlines may have their own in-house form for you to complete in addition
- 1 x Annex II form, for good measure
- 1 x C5 customs form, already faxed to James Cargo
I made copies of everything to go in my hand luggage. All originals travel with your pets on the day of flight.
Pet carrier/kennel
The trouble with getting the right kennel is that you're dealing with three sets of info: IATA regulations, your airline's regulations, and general online info (a lot of it garnered from pet transport agent sites). In terms of size, it's really important to check what your airline requires, as they can differ significantly. As far as I could work out, the most important things for pets flying cargo are:
- pet's ears must not touch the top of the box
- pet must be able to easily turn around, sit up, lie down
- the kennel must have ventilation on all 4 sides, with one side being a door. Kennels with doors in the roof are not acceptable.
- if it's the kind of kennel that is assembled from two halves, the top and the bottom must be screwed together, not just secured by plastic clips.
(General online consensus is that the screws should be metal, although I'm not sure if that appears in the IATA rules. You can buy little kits of replacement metal screws online if your kennel uses plastic. The Petmate Vari-Kennel I used has metal screws with plastic wingnuts; I bought some replacement metal wingnuts at a hardware store for $2, but didn't end up using them, as no one at BA Cargo mentioned it.)
- food and water dishes must be secured to the inside of the door. I froze some water into the dishes but didn't put in any food.
- absorbent bedding must be placed on the kennel floor (we used old towels). You can put in plenty of blankets, but no toys in the crate.
- the door must be securable with metal pins that engage at least 1.6 cm into the doorframe (any shallower and an agitated pet could shove the door until it popped out).
- Pets shouldn't be able to fit paws and noses through the door/ventilation holes.
- There's no official requirement to have small extra holes around the door for zip-tying it shut, but it does seem like a a good idea; just make sure the holes are very close to the door so there's not too much zip-tie in the kennel interior (ie don't stick the zip-tie through the side ventilation hole to secure the front door, as pets have been known to chew and swallow bits of the plastic).
IATA guidelines can be downloaded from here:
http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/cargo/l...ges/index.aspx
We bought two Petmate Vari-Kennels in Medium, which were acceptable according to all the various size guidelines I'd garnered from BA and the IATA website. The Medium is pretty big for a cat, even our 19-pounders, but the Small Vari-Kennel isn't accepted by BA. I attached ziplocked baggies of dried food to the handle, along with our flight details, and wrote contact names and numbers on the boxes, and applied lots of green LIVE ANIMAL and THIS WAY UP stickers.
If at all possible, buy kennels in person rather than online, as companies seem to have trouble writing up accurate descriptions! I've read a lot of angry reviews from online customers who bought kennels which turned out to be smaller than advertised, or to lack 4-sided ventilation. The pet shops I went into in LA didn't really know about international travel regulations (and so kept trying to sell me soft-sided carriers 'perfect for flights' -- definitely no good for flying cargo) but I could at least check everything out for myself.
The day of travel
We got to the BA World cargo depot 5 hours before the flight.
The BA World Cargo desk is not especially set up for private customers, although everyone was perfectly friendly. It isn't a dedicated pet-shipping area, and all other clients that day were dealing with commercial freight/cargo. It wasn't madly busy, though. The cat boxes were weighed, and the BA cargo rep applied yet more LIVE ANIMAL stickers. She took all our original documents, sealed them into wallets, and taped them to the crates. We signed some more paperwork and paid $1600. My husband wept for the cost. I wept for the cats. The BA rep didn't say anything about zip-tying the door shut, but I'd brought my own zip-ties and did it anyway. Then my husband was given some freight paperwork and was asked to take the cats round to the warehouse next door. There both cats and crates were x-rayed -- BA had informed us that this would happen, and that this was safe for the cats. I took their word for it, as, the previous time we'd flown, it was a horrible experience having to take the cats out of their boxes while the crates were x-rayed. Then we were done, and called another taxi to take us to the terminal. The whole thing took just under an hour.
Arrival
When we were disembarking the plane at LHR, I saw a little van marked BA World Cargo driving away; it turned out the cats were in there. They went straight to the Animal Reception Center (on Beacon Road, near Terminal 4), while we took about an hour to get through baggage reclaim, customs etc. We took a cab to the ARC, with an extremely grumpy driver who didn't really know where it was and blamed us for this. It's only 5 minutes' drive from terminal 5, but it's not well signposted (and when it is, is sometimes referred to as 'Animal Quarantine Station'). BA had emailed me a map, but I hadn't brought it.
At the ARC, we were told that the cats had already arrived, and were in good health, and that it would take an hour or so to process them. I can't say enough good things about the ARC staff: they are very kind, very reassuring, and very good at their jobs! There's a waiting area with sofas and snack machines. You can't actually see your pets until they've been officially processed, but the ARC staff will take them out of their kennels, remove any soiled bedding, and give them food and water.
In the end it took closer to two hours for everything to be finished, but staff came out at regular intervals to keep us updated. We didn't have to pay any further fees, so BA were correct in saying that their price was all-inclusive. Both cats got given official certificates giving them permission to enter the UK, which obviously we'll now have framed as souvenirs of their $1600 journey. Then the cats were brought out to us, along with a black sack containing their damp bedding (mostly just wet from spilled water), and we called another taxi to take us to south London.
A week later, both cats are now doing fine in our new flat. They were unsettled at first, but chilled out again surprisingly quickly, and were eating, drinking and using the litter tray within a few hours. (I'd brought a small new litter tray in my luggage; we filled it with torn-up paper until we got a chance to buy some litter.)
Easy, right? Just don't make me do it again. Twice in 2.5 years is enough for both me and the cats.
Safe travels to you and your pets!
We're both British, so, in the absence of visa issues, the most stressful aspect of our move was getting the cats over. Looking back, it's not actually that bad a process, but I did get a lot of confusing/contradictory info -- and the bottom line is that you really really want your pets to arrive safely, so of course you want to get everything right and it stresses you out.
I'm going to write up a veeeery long and pedantic account of our experience. Before we flew, I spent ages on this site, and on UK Yankee's pet section, reading through other people's stories. It's nice to know you're not the only one agonizing over Mr Fluffikin's paperwork.
The basic costs of two fat cats, flying with us from LAX to LHR, with no agent:
$1600 shipping with British Airways
$500 vet fees for sorting out paperwork
$40 USDA stamp of approval on paperwork
(and $120 for new kennels)
Flying with BA
We were divided over whether to choose BA or Virgin. I've heard good things about both; in the end, we went BA for a variety of reasons: they had a better flight time, we could get decent one-way ticket deals for ourselves, their pet travel section was easier to call (their operating hours meant I could call until 2pm from the west coast; Virgin's were on UK time, despite being a US number, which meant I always had to get through by 10am.)
BA quoted us, on various phonecalls, between $1400-1600 for the 2 cats in two crates, including all inspection fees at Heathrow. The final cost wasn't actually calculated until we dropped them off; it was $1600.
(In comparison, Virgin quoted $1700 plus about £340 in inspection fees.)
How were BA? Overall, fine:
- they got the cats here safely, so I'm satisfied!
- they have a pet travel department (at BA World Cargo) who pick up the phone and answer questions and are generally helpful.
- they are used to dealing with animals.
- they do 'strongly recommend' you use an agent, but it's not obligatory (unless you're flying OUT of Heathrow; the BA World Cargo there doesn't deal with private customers at all).
Some negatives:
- I get the impression they're still geared more towards dealing with agents. The pet section of their website is quite sparse. I've heard that Virgin are a lot slicker and customer-oriented. With BA, most of your initial info is going to come over the phone; it's not until you book that you get a confirmation email with all the facts.
- we got some varying info about minimum interior kennel size which really stressed me out, as it meant our original kennels might have been an inch or so too small. (The cats had already flown in them from Europe to the US, but that was a more laid-back process.) I'd read enough about people getting turned away at the airport because of relatively minor measurement issues, so this made me nervous, and resulted in two new (and probably unnecessary) kennels being purchased.
- the biggest negative: they gave us the wrong address for the LAX cargo terminal at which we were supposed to drop off our cats. In fairness, the BA World Cargo depot at LAX has recently moved; even Googlemaps still shows the old site. But it's NOT at Aviation Way any more! It's within the Qantas depot at 6555 W. Imperial Highway, five minutes' drive down the road. I live near LAX, and decided to scope out the drop-off before our day of travel, and am so glad I did. The Aviation Way site is part of a very large cargo complex, with scores of different airlines and BA World Cargo still on the sign. I drove in and couldn't find BA anywhere. Asked a security guard; he thought it was somewhere near the DHL depot. Asked at DHL; they thought it was a bit further up. Asked at another airline; was finally told that it had changed address and was not at this site at all. Okay, so I got there in the end, but even without cats it was a confusing 40 minutes of driving around the cargo hinterlands of LAX, and I can only imagine the stress of doing so in a taxi on the day of travel. BA gave the incorrect address on their website (the phone number is at least valid) and on the confirmation email they sent when I booked the cats. When I emailed back to query, they simply said 'yes, it has recently moved' and gave me the new address. No 'oops' or 'sorry'.
The booking process
- with BA, you can only book pets within 14 days of travel. (With Virgin, I think it's 3 months.) I actually preferred the 14 days thing, because we only booked our own flights 3 weeks in advance and it was good to know the pet places couldn't all have been snapped up already.
(Both airlines do recommend you call the pet/cargo department to confirm availability before booking your own tickets. Then, once you've booked your tickets, call back and book the pets.)
- you book the pets over the phone, giving specifications on kennel dimensions and total weight. They estimate the price, and within a few days they send you a confirmation email with lots of info about where to drop-off (hmm) and pick-up. At this point, you have to complete a C5 customs form and fax it to James Cargo at Heathrow, who will be responsible for the cats in between them getting off the plane and into the Animal Reception Centre. If James Cargo don't receive your C5 and confirm it with BA, your booking is automatically cancelled. The C5 form isn't complicated, though, and doesn't need to be stamped/signed by a vet.
- BA have no in-house forms for pet travel; from the US, they require the APHIS 7001 (see below) as an international health certificate, which you'll already need to get pets into the UK.
- you have to check pets in at the cargo depot at least 4 hours before your flight; 5 is safer, as it does take a while for all the paperwork to be processed and attached to the kennels.
Preparing for transit
Our cats are originally from Germany, so they already have the ISO microchips and EU pet passports. We got their rabies shots as soon as we heard we might be moving to London, as the shots must be done at least 21 days in advance. There is currently (March 2013) no titer test or flea/tick/worm treatment requirement for cats.
Basically, cats need to be:
1) microchipped,
2) vaccinated against rabies at least 21 days in advance (they must have been microchipped first),
3) confirmed as fit to travel within 10 days of flight.
The paperwork you need is:
- rabies certificate from administering vet
- (possibly a letter from the vet if there's any ambiguity regarding the microchip implantation pre-dating the rabies shots. We didn't need this as the cats had been microchipped several years prior)
- APHIS 7001 form
- Annex II form
- (pet passports, if you have them)
- C5 customs form (very simple)
Vets and international paperwork
We have a very nice, very reasonably priced local vet who does rabies shots for only $15 -- but once we were dealing with the international paperwork it became clear that this was totally beyond their remit. Even when you get the rabies shots done you need to make sure that key info is recorded on the rabies certificate: DEFRA requires it to show the animal's microchip number, with date of implantation and where it's located on the animal, plus the brand, date given, expiry date and batch number of the vaccine, and the vet needs to sign it and ideally the practice should stamp it.
See:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-pet...s/vaccination/
(If you also have a pet passport, this info also gets recorded on the rabies page.)
The rabies certificate my vet originally offered was basically name of pet and date of vaccine, so this wasn't sufficient. They manually added the necessary details, even though they thought it was all very OTT.
We discussed coming in for the pre-flight health-check paperwork at a later date, but they had never completed the forms before. They were generally a great clinic -- but if you haven't dealt with the international stuff then I don't think you really appreciate how important all the mind-numbing paperwork details are (especially if you're based somewhere like California, where pet import regulations are very relaxed).
So, from a recommendation here, I went to a much larger practice; Santa Monica Pet Medical Center, in case you're in LA. I had a very reassuring phonecall with Karen there, who is absolutely 100% on the ball with international pet travel and has done tons of APHIS forms etc. The downside was that, ouch, it was expensive: $250 per cat for paperwork processing and pre-flight inspection. It was definitely worth it, though: several weeks before we flew, I emailed scans of the cats' passports and rabies certificates to Karen and she got a head start on completing the 7001 and Annex II (I'm not sure if we totally needed the latter, since we already had the passports, but decided to get every single bit of paperwork I could). She noticed straight away that my original vets had inadvertently put different vaccine batch numbers on the rabies certificates and the passports.
(I was doubly glad of going with SMPMC when I approached the old vets to get this corrected; they were really cranky, saying that 'no one cared' about the exact numbers. Yup, that's what it's like importing a pet to England; just slap a post-it on your cat saying 'rabies free' and they'll let him in.)
Anyway. I insisted. They amended the certificates. Karen completed the APHIS 7001 and Annex II forms. We took the cats to SMPMC for a health check within the 10-day pre-flight window, and the vet signed them off with a clean bill of health. I drove down to the USDA office at 7am the next morning to get the 7001 stamped.
In LA, the USDA state veterinarian's office opens at 7:30, but there were already people waiting at 7. It takes 5-15 minutes to process each set of paperwork, so you don't want to get stuck behind a pet agent who has scores of documents. You don't need to take your pet.
The APHIS 7001 must be stamped by *the* USDA state veterinarian's office, not just a vet who is accredited with the USDA. The 10-day pre-travel window is not flexible.
So, the USDA stamped the paperwork without issue (Karen at SMPMC had actually faxed copies of it all to them the previous afternoon, just to check if there were any problems). Back at home, I scanned it all and emailed it to the Heathrow Animal Reception Centre; this isn't a requirement, they'd just suggested this when I'd called up earlier to ask about documents. They got back to me within 48 hours saying it all looked good. At this point, I had:
- 2 x pet passports, containing details of cats' microchips, rabies vaccination record, and fit-to-fly status
- 2 x rabies vaccination certificates from our original vet
- 1 x APHIS 7001 form, signed by SMPMC vet who'd done the pre-flight health-check, and stamped by the USDA state veterinarian. This also served as our international health certificate as required by BA; other airlines may have their own in-house form for you to complete in addition
- 1 x Annex II form, for good measure
- 1 x C5 customs form, already faxed to James Cargo
I made copies of everything to go in my hand luggage. All originals travel with your pets on the day of flight.
Pet carrier/kennel
The trouble with getting the right kennel is that you're dealing with three sets of info: IATA regulations, your airline's regulations, and general online info (a lot of it garnered from pet transport agent sites). In terms of size, it's really important to check what your airline requires, as they can differ significantly. As far as I could work out, the most important things for pets flying cargo are:
- pet's ears must not touch the top of the box
- pet must be able to easily turn around, sit up, lie down
- the kennel must have ventilation on all 4 sides, with one side being a door. Kennels with doors in the roof are not acceptable.
- if it's the kind of kennel that is assembled from two halves, the top and the bottom must be screwed together, not just secured by plastic clips.
(General online consensus is that the screws should be metal, although I'm not sure if that appears in the IATA rules. You can buy little kits of replacement metal screws online if your kennel uses plastic. The Petmate Vari-Kennel I used has metal screws with plastic wingnuts; I bought some replacement metal wingnuts at a hardware store for $2, but didn't end up using them, as no one at BA Cargo mentioned it.)
- food and water dishes must be secured to the inside of the door. I froze some water into the dishes but didn't put in any food.
- absorbent bedding must be placed on the kennel floor (we used old towels). You can put in plenty of blankets, but no toys in the crate.
- the door must be securable with metal pins that engage at least 1.6 cm into the doorframe (any shallower and an agitated pet could shove the door until it popped out).
- Pets shouldn't be able to fit paws and noses through the door/ventilation holes.
- There's no official requirement to have small extra holes around the door for zip-tying it shut, but it does seem like a a good idea; just make sure the holes are very close to the door so there's not too much zip-tie in the kennel interior (ie don't stick the zip-tie through the side ventilation hole to secure the front door, as pets have been known to chew and swallow bits of the plastic).
IATA guidelines can be downloaded from here:
http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/cargo/l...ges/index.aspx
We bought two Petmate Vari-Kennels in Medium, which were acceptable according to all the various size guidelines I'd garnered from BA and the IATA website. The Medium is pretty big for a cat, even our 19-pounders, but the Small Vari-Kennel isn't accepted by BA. I attached ziplocked baggies of dried food to the handle, along with our flight details, and wrote contact names and numbers on the boxes, and applied lots of green LIVE ANIMAL and THIS WAY UP stickers.
If at all possible, buy kennels in person rather than online, as companies seem to have trouble writing up accurate descriptions! I've read a lot of angry reviews from online customers who bought kennels which turned out to be smaller than advertised, or to lack 4-sided ventilation. The pet shops I went into in LA didn't really know about international travel regulations (and so kept trying to sell me soft-sided carriers 'perfect for flights' -- definitely no good for flying cargo) but I could at least check everything out for myself.
The day of travel
We got to the BA World cargo depot 5 hours before the flight.
The BA World Cargo desk is not especially set up for private customers, although everyone was perfectly friendly. It isn't a dedicated pet-shipping area, and all other clients that day were dealing with commercial freight/cargo. It wasn't madly busy, though. The cat boxes were weighed, and the BA cargo rep applied yet more LIVE ANIMAL stickers. She took all our original documents, sealed them into wallets, and taped them to the crates. We signed some more paperwork and paid $1600. My husband wept for the cost. I wept for the cats. The BA rep didn't say anything about zip-tying the door shut, but I'd brought my own zip-ties and did it anyway. Then my husband was given some freight paperwork and was asked to take the cats round to the warehouse next door. There both cats and crates were x-rayed -- BA had informed us that this would happen, and that this was safe for the cats. I took their word for it, as, the previous time we'd flown, it was a horrible experience having to take the cats out of their boxes while the crates were x-rayed. Then we were done, and called another taxi to take us to the terminal. The whole thing took just under an hour.
Arrival
When we were disembarking the plane at LHR, I saw a little van marked BA World Cargo driving away; it turned out the cats were in there. They went straight to the Animal Reception Center (on Beacon Road, near Terminal 4), while we took about an hour to get through baggage reclaim, customs etc. We took a cab to the ARC, with an extremely grumpy driver who didn't really know where it was and blamed us for this. It's only 5 minutes' drive from terminal 5, but it's not well signposted (and when it is, is sometimes referred to as 'Animal Quarantine Station'). BA had emailed me a map, but I hadn't brought it.
At the ARC, we were told that the cats had already arrived, and were in good health, and that it would take an hour or so to process them. I can't say enough good things about the ARC staff: they are very kind, very reassuring, and very good at their jobs! There's a waiting area with sofas and snack machines. You can't actually see your pets until they've been officially processed, but the ARC staff will take them out of their kennels, remove any soiled bedding, and give them food and water.
In the end it took closer to two hours for everything to be finished, but staff came out at regular intervals to keep us updated. We didn't have to pay any further fees, so BA were correct in saying that their price was all-inclusive. Both cats got given official certificates giving them permission to enter the UK, which obviously we'll now have framed as souvenirs of their $1600 journey. Then the cats were brought out to us, along with a black sack containing their damp bedding (mostly just wet from spilled water), and we called another taxi to take us to south London.
A week later, both cats are now doing fine in our new flat. They were unsettled at first, but chilled out again surprisingly quickly, and were eating, drinking and using the litter tray within a few hours. (I'd brought a small new litter tray in my luggage; we filled it with torn-up paper until we got a chance to buy some litter.)
Easy, right? Just don't make me do it again. Twice in 2.5 years is enough for both me and the cats.
Safe travels to you and your pets!