Bark Air & K9

What route did you fly?

NY to London on K9 Jets and London to New York on Bark Air  (Technically, Teterboro to Biggin Hill airports)

Why did you decide to fly these charter operators instead of putting Ella in the hold?

I needed to bring my 13-year-old Saluki-golden retriever mix Ella over to London for an extended stay. She’s not a service dog, and I would never put her in the hold for a transatlantic flight—she’s too skittish and nervous; she’s not even good in the back seat of my car for long distances (she shakes and pants incessantly), and I think it would break her soul. So it was amazing to be able to have her at my feet and not have to worry about airports and all that intense stimulation, noise, and hectic energy.  

Did you need any special paperwork to be able to bring Ella on the flight?

Yes, you need to complete a whole set of documents to ensure your dog isn’t bringing anything into another country. It effectively replaces a quarantine. You have to have a physical that is approved by the vet within 10 days, confirming good health. You need to have an updated rabies shot—England requires it every year, even though the US allows you to do it every three years. And you have to deworm within 48 hours. All that paperwork has to come back signed officially from Albany (if you’re leaving New York) and when we left, it was a bit hectic cause it was over Presidents’ Day, so we missed a business day on the turnaround and it all arrived the day of the flight, which was pretty down to the wire. 

On these flights, how do they seat the dogs and the humans?

They organize where you sit based off your weight and your dog’s weight. Ella’s about 55 pounds and couldn’t really sit on the seat, nor my lap, which some small dogs did with their owners. It’s one-to-one human to dog, or one to two if your dogs are under 25 pounds each, so it’s basically 10 humans and at minimum, 10 dogs. (K9 also allows cats.)

So all the big dogs lie in the aisle of a small 12-seater jet. The extra two seats are for the staff. (In the case of Bark Air, they were vets who got to fly free and spend time in the destination cities.) It’s pretty sardine-like in there.

Can you compare the in-flight experience and amenities? How did they control the chaos?

K9 is an English outfit, and they kind of just give you a sandwich and leave you alone. They don’t give the dogs any food—they want to make sure the dogs don’t have any accidents.

Bark Air, by contrast, was more oriented towards fun and social media opportunities. During the flight, they hand out “puppuccinos” and “chompagne” (whipped cream cup and bone broth, respectively). Honestly, the amenities were a bit overkill. They come through offering the dogs “spa time,” which meant cleaning Ella’s eyes and face and putting on some sort of pomade to shine up her nose with a shower cap on her head, which really just seemed like a photo op. We declined the offer to take her to the cockpit mid-flight so they could take a picture with the pilot… All the dogs came back shaking. I don’t think they really need to see all the lights and gadgets in the cockpit and they probably could peek down in the windows to see the distance, which I think can be super fear-inducing for them. A pair of very growly wolfhounds that they had put in the very back of the plane to separate them from other dogs were traipsed all the way through the plane to the front (where we were seated) to do the pilot pic. The poor things were decidedly less confident on the way back—seemingly shaking from what they’d seen. At the end, they even brought out a Topsider shoe underneath a metal bell cloche for a sort of pièce se resistance moment, with dog-bone cupcakes around it for the dogs to have, which was funny, but like who hasn’t spent years training their dogs not to chew on shoes?!

The staff were very friendly, but all the walking up and down basically meant that the dogs couldn’t rest, which is really all you want them to do.

What was the vibe among the humans?

A lot of the humans chatted, though I mainly just read and made sure Ella felt safe and calm and wasn’t being stepped on. I remember one guy (on Bark Air) had a very nervous dog who wouldn’t stop barking, and we talked about the source of the issue (it seemed like a very neurotic but beautiful dog—he was moving from London to NYC).

I can’t say I made friends, but, you know, these are dog people who’d do anything for their pets, so there is a lot of cooing pet voices and pet names being whispered. It’s not like a big party.

Did you encounter any problems or conflicts?

If you happen to get a flight with more cats (on K9), it’s ideal, because they’re in crates, which leaves more room in the aisle for the dogs to lay down. The thing that’s not great about having so many dogs who don’t know each other in a small plane is that when one starts barking nervously, it kick-starts a cacophony, and some are shakers, others are nippers, etc. That means as soon as someone accidentally steps on a tail, there’s a lot of snappy, confused dogs.

Also, on the K9 flight, one woman’s muzzled dog who was seated next to me somehow snapped through the muzzle and bit my dog or sort of snagged her with its tooth, so I let Ella come off leash and she walked herself to the back to sit somewhere safely. She kept one eye on where I was seated, but took care of herself, which is what you want your animal to do—find safety and comfort. It was fine in the end; they do ask you before when you’re booking the temperament of your dog in terms of aggressive, or avoidant or neutral. My dog is avoidant, but will respond if attacked, and this one was obviously very aggressive. I guess it’s a better combination at least than having two aggressive dogs near each other.

Can the dogs relieve themselves on such a long flight?

No one goes potty. One old French bulldog had a diaper; otherwise, you just try to make sure your dog pees and doesn’t drink much before they take the flight. 

There’s an area, of course, for the dogs to do their business at the airport in advance, and they want you to meet the other dogs to get a sense of the temperament and so it’s not the first time that the dogs sniff each other once on board. In London, there’s a grassy area at the airport for them to go, although at Teterboro it was all tarmac. My dog will only go on grass, and there was literally nowhere for her to go when we landed, which is tough because it had been such a long flight we had to wait until we got our Uber and drove down a bit to a grassy spot and then she relieved herself there.

Which experience did you prefer?

At the end of the day, you get there safely. You’re a bit exhausted, but it’s effectively the cost of a first-class ticket (both about $9k) and you get to have your dog safely at your feet. Mainly, it’s a question of the date you want to fly. I am happy to fly either of them again. They both fly twice a month between NY and London, and now they’re doing a lot more routes. It seems like Bark Air does more US cities (NY, Ft. Lauderdale, LA, SF and Seattle) and K9 does East Coast to a lot of different European cities. (You can see their route list here for K9 and here for Bark Air.)