Milo Boyd from UK’s Daily Mirror – Reports

K9 JETS will start by flying cats, dogs, parrots and rabbits between the East Coast of the US, London, Paris and Lisbon, with tickets costing from £7,100 for an owner and their pet.

The UK’s first private jet company for pets has been flooded with request ahead of its launch later this month. Although tickets for the first K9 JETS flight don’t even go on sale until the end of February, 2,200 people have already registered their interested in the service. Owners and their pets will clamber aboard a luxury Gulfstream jet that seats no more than ten passengers with their pets and take off on routes between the East Coast of the US, London, Paris and Lisbon. Tickets start at £7,100, which includes space for one human and their pet, as well as private terminal fees, luggage and all taxes. While the service will mostly cater for the cats and dogs market, creatures including parrots and rabbits are welcomed, so long as all of their paperwork is in order.

The firm will start selling tickets later this month ( Image: Copyright Paul Clarke www.paulclarke.com Moral rights asserted)
K9 JETS was founded by Birmingham based executive assistant Kirsty and pilot Adam Golder, who currently run more traditional private jet firm G6 AVIATION which generally caters for “high net worth families, music moguls, footballers, and royal families”. They spotted a gap in the market in 2022 amid to a surge in demand from pet owners relocating from the UK to the US and vice versa, who were terrified of condemning their mutts and moggies to commercial aircraft. Anna Baines, who does PR for K9 Jets, explained to the Mirror how the system works.

“The passengers form a group and share the cost of a private charter where dogs can sit by their owner’s lap or snooze by their feet, rather than subjecting their beloved pets to cargo in a commercial aircraft,” she said.

“Chartering a private jet is a luxury service, however, with the opportunity to purchase a seat rather than a whole jet, it makes it more in reach for those who want to travel or relocate across the Atlantic.” The company has already been flooded with inquiries.

(Image: Paul Clarke. Copyright Paul Clarke www.paulclarke.com Moral rights asserted)

“People are also working more flexibly in a remote manner, which means it’s easier to work from a home in a different country, opening up new experiences for home working. The price tag of moving a pet abroad varies hugely depending on the means of transport and the destination country, but it typically costs several thousand pounds to make a UK to US move.

Madison and James Miller recently found the emotional toll was much higher than this when their dog Bluebell ended up in Saudi Arabia rather than the US following a British Airways mix-up. Anna says that some pet owners aren’t willing to fly commercial, and aren’t able to book a place on the pet friendly cruise liner the Queen Mary 2 due to very high demand. On the flights themselves dogs must be on their leads and cats in their carriers, with a member of staff providing refreshments throughout the flight. Over the past year a number of animals have flown on the non-pet specialist G6 AVIATION, including a 84kg Great Dane, an 11kg French Bulldogs and a number of different cat species.

Heike Ritter recently flew her 12 dogs to Germany aboard a chartered G6 jet.

“Everybody can imagine how stressful such a move already is on its own,” she told The Mirror.

“G6 was always available to answer any questions or concerns, but they were also proactive by sharing and communicating all kinds of logistics with us.”

The launch of the airline is unlikely to be welcomed by environmental activists, given the much higher impact of private jets per passenger than commercial ones. Broadly speaking, the more passengers on a plane, the less severe its impact on the environment is. In just one hour, a single private jet can emit two tonnes of CO2 – meaning a trans-Atlantic flight would clock up around 12.

Split between the ten people aboard a K9 JETS flights, that’s 1.2 tonnes of CO2 each – roughly four times the amount produced per economy seat passenger on a commercial jet. The average person in the EU emits 8.2 tCO2eq over the course of an entire year, by way of comparison, according to Transport Environment.