The pet care business is a soaring industry. New offerings in the field indicate that, recession or not, people love to spend money on their pets.
Today's example: Pet Airways, an airline that - as the name suggests - caters exclusively to pets, will launch in July, offering safe and comfortable airway travel for domestic animals. The first flight is scheduled to depart from Teterboro (a small airport outside of New York) on July 14, with stops in Washington, Chicago, Denver and Los Angeles.
The modified plane can accommodate about 50 animal passengers on each flight (no humans allowed!), with tickets priced at $149 each way. Considering the cost of boarding a pet, or paying for a pet-sitter, Pet Airways could be the economical choice when traveling long distances for extended periods of time.
A few tid-bits about pets and travel:
-It's estimated that 76 million cats and dogs travel each year in the United States. Two million of those are on airplanes.
- Unfortunately, animal rights experts estimate that annually, about 5,000 animals suffer injury during airline travel. Pet- exclusive air travel ostensibly would eliminate much of the risk, since pets would not travel in cargo departments or have to undergo heavy sedation to travel in the cabin.
Does the advent of Pet Airways mean that we will soon see people waiting in the passenger pick-up zones with handwritten signs for "Rover" and "Mr. Wigglebottoms" and bouquets of fresh catnip? I don't know about you, but my fingers are crossed.
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