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Help Needed Re: Pets, Car

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  • Help Needed Re: Pets, Car

    Aloha,

    My husband and I will be moving to Oahu June 1st! We are very excited about the move. I have an phone interview in a couple of weeks at a university in the area and my husband will be attending a graduate program at the University of Hawaii.

    My question is in regards to flying pets to the island. We have already went through the lenghty process of vaccinating them, etc....So no worries there. What I'm wondering is if anyone that has had their pets flown to HI has suggestions for the best airlines in which to do so?

    Also, has anyone shipped their car from mainland to hawaii? We've looked at Matson as a possibility. We've went back and forth between selling here and buying there...or shipping. The thing is we are the 1st owners of our car and know how its been taken care of. I'm worried about buying used there and then getting a lemon. So, we've decided to ship. Now, just wondering through whom. Thanks for all of your help!

  • #2
    Re: Help Needed Re: Pets, Car

    Matson's pretty much the 800-lb. gorilla in transporting cars to and from Hawaii. The only other company that's pushing for business there that I know of is Horizon Lines. They brag about "sealed containers" and have on their site an $899 special, CA to HI.

    Wait a minute. Our own Erika Engle recently wrote about a third competitor to Matson and Horizon, PASHA Hawaii Transport. They say their standard car service is also priced at $899.

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    • #3
      Re: Help Needed Re: Pets, Car

      Originally posted by starrynights
      What I'm wondering is if anyone that has had their pets flown to HI has suggestions for the best airlines in which to do so?
      I can tell you one airline to avoid, at least in the pet shipping department. Aloha Airlines *does not* ship animals, whether with you in the passenger compartment or with the luggage below. My wife and I found this out the hard way when we decided to adopt our dog while on a trip to visit the family.

      Since we'd already flown over on Aloha, we ended up buying a round trip from Honolulu to the Bay Area on ATA, using the first leg of that trip to get the dog home. (We used the second leg to go back to HNL a few months later for a wedding, then the original return ticket on Aloha to go home. Just the beginning of the things we've done for this dog!)

      Though we didn't need to quarantine her (our dog, not my wife ) to take Koa home to SFO, we had to get a physical, shots, a health certificate and a vet's note stating she was OK to fly. After all that the airline literally never even glanced at all the documentation, even with several staffers making goo-goo eyes over the dog. Go figure.

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      • #4
        Re: Help Needed Re: Pets, Car

        My truck went from St Louis to Honolulu via Horizon, which was the cheapest (it did NOT come in a container). For not being in an container, my truck was surprisingly really really clean However, my truck got here with a big hole in the tail light, which the company eventually paid to have replaced. I had just had a bunch of work done on my truck and the price we paid to ship it was worth it if my truck continued to run like an angel for another 6 months.

        Our pets flew American Airlines from St Louis to LA in the cabin (we were going to fly AA the second leg, however, the flight didn't leave early enough for us). We stayed the night in LA, then flew Hawaiian first thing in the morning from LA to Honolulu. The guy at the Hawaiian counter did take a look at all of the vet papers and whatnot (he attached a few to the carrier itself) as well as added a few stickers to the carrier. They took the cats from us when we went to carry our luggage to the big security machines (after scanning the pet carriers first). And the pets are taken off the plane in Honolulu and driven to the Animal Quarantine office at the airport where they were let out to go potty and get some water. Ours stayed in quarantine (we lacked the blood test as we pretty much picked up and moved within 4 weeks) so they may have treated our cats differently. If you're picking your pets up at the office for immediate release, you can't just walk out with them - the pets have to go from the office to a car or cab, so once you get here, you'll need to rent a car or grab a cab (they have numbers of pet-friendly cab services, if i recall correctly). I only add that because I remember a couple who were trying to take their dog out and their dog was OK for immediate release, however, they began to argue about it because their ride wasn't going to be there for another few hours and they didnt want to get a cab just to ride around and yadda yadda and I thought they were gonna brawl! (there's bulletproof glass everywhere - I guess pet owners get violent hehe)

        We flew here in the summer and we kept reading that if it's warmer than 75 degrees at the Honolulu airport, pets can't fly. We got really worried since we were taking the earliest flight we could find (and get our pets on - do note that you have to make them a reservation, too, as they only allow so many pets on apparently) and were landing around noon and the temperature had been around 85 degrees the days prior to us flying in. When we were checking in, we voiced our concerns because we didn't want our cats to be stuck in LA while we were in Hawaii, and the guy at the ticket counter kinda giggled and said, "it's always 75 to 80 degrees there," so the temperature rule may not be a big deal to Hawaiian or any airline for that matter.

        -k

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        • #5
          Re: Help Needed Re: Pets, Car

          Thanks so much for all of your help!

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          • #6
            Re: Help Needed Re: Pets, Car

            Hello!

            I'm a fellow pet lover and was researching this for a friend recently. From reading websites and making a few calls (although you can't always trust the information the phone reps give you now-a-days since they are just reading from a script), it was my conclusion that the ONLY airline that will let your small pet fly in the cabin with you to Hawaii is ATA. Most other airlines allow the pet to go in the baggage....I think the exception, as mentioned on another post, was Aloha. Although both Hawaiian and Aloha will allow pets to travel interisland.

            I'm VERY interested to know what you ultimately do since I've spent a lot of time researching and am still a little uneasy that the information I found is the truth of the matter. The airlines definitely give themselves a lot of room to refuse your pet at the airport if they feel like it (for temperature reasons or the many other possible reasons they list on their websites). Given that, you might want to consider some of the better airlines for customer service (so the risk of them giving you trouble last minute is lower) like Hawaiian. But Hawaiian definitely won't let pets travel in the cabin with you from mainland to HI flights.

            GOOD LUCK!
            Warmest Aloha,
            Anitra
            Hawaii Budget Travel Specialist

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