Flying With A Dog To The UK – What does it cost?

Flying With A Dog To The UK – What does it cost?

This week I was asked by a neighbour if I could take him, his dog (Indie) and their luggage to the airport as they were returning to the UK for good. His wife went in a separate car with other friends.

Dogs travelling by air to the UK from Fuerteventura have to travel by air freight and not as baggage. Because of this they have to be taken to the cargo terminal at Fuerteventura airport. This is located off of the first roundabout at El Matoral.

Animals can only arrive into the UK by air in a few airports that have an animal reception centre (Manchester, Gatwick and Heathrow) and also on a scheduled flight. This limits the options, and, of course pushes up the price. They were flying on a Monarch flight to Manchester, all booked through the airline and the costs were ridiculous. Just for a very small dog like Indie the costs were:

750€ – for the flight by freight
200€ – late flight fee because it was to arrive after 20:30 hrs
49€ – administration fee (only notified to them the night before)
=====
999€ – Total which is about £850/$1070

As you can see, taking dogs by air to the UK, is an absolute rip-off! Passengers in the cabin were paying around 45€ to fly so 22 passengers could fly for the same cost as one small dog in the hold! Travelling with a dog to the UK is extortion frankly.

Flying with a dog to other countries in the EU travel is much cheaper. It costs roughly the same cost as the passenger and they go as baggage through the terminal, not as freight. Small dogs, the size of Indie, can actually travel in a small carrier in the cabin too.

The UK has always been overprotective as far as this is concerned. For decades any dog coming into the UK had to spend 6 months in quarantine kennels (at great expense) in order to check that none had rabies. In all the 40 or 50 years that the poor dogs had to be separated from their owners not one case of rabies was found! So it stopped nothing.

The alternatives to flying with a dog directly to the UK are either:

1. Fly with them to somewhere close in the EU – France, Belgium, Holland and then arrange for someone to drive over on the cross channel ferry to meet you.

2. Overland/Ferries. You can either drive the dog yourself via the ferry to mainland Spain and then up through Spain (and France) to the UK or there are specialist transport companies that do this.

Read my post on having dogs in Fuerteventura