Featured Map for 8 November 2022:
Seymour's Gotcha Trip

Sunday's Featured Map about Turkish Airlines to North America was inspired by the fact that my new old dog had just flown to North American with Turkish Airlines. Seymour is a senior rescue (about 9-10 years old) Golden Retriever from Turkey.

Tattered Paws and Golden Hearts Rescue is a Seattle-based organization (er, Bellingham) which brings Golden Retrievers and other dogs to new homes in the United States and Canada, mostly from Turkey but also from kill shelters in Texas and occasionaly from other locations. In Turkey, they work with a shelter in Bursa named The Garden, which houses 500-700 dogs at any given time and works with a handful of rescue groups in the UK and other countries in addition to Tattered Paws. Since it was founded in 2018, Tattered Paws has placed about 570 dogs with the help of 30 or so volunteers across the US and Canada.

Why fly dogs thousands of miles, and why from Turkey? See the "About Us" page from the references below.

Transporting the animals is a bigger logistical problem than I would have expected. Flying animals as checked baggage is generally less expensive than flying them as cargo, so volunteers go to Turkey for a few days and fly back with as many as eight or more dogs as baggage. Canada currently is not accepting international arrivals of dogs, and for the United States only four airports of entry are currently available. Tattered Paws uses New York's JFK with support from The ARK pet oasis.

From New York, some animals are transported by car to nearby new homes. Pilots N Paws helps with somewhat longer domestic transports. For even longer trips, Tattered Paws reached across town to Seattle-based Alaska Airlines to forge a partnership for economical transport of dogs as cargo. Most or all other US major airlines no longer will carry animals as cargo, and even on Alaska there is a catch: they can only fly on Boeing 737s and not on the Airbus A320-family aircraft that Alaska acquired along with Virgin America. This may be because cargo-hold heat is an Airbus option which Virgin America didn't order, or simply that operating procedures were never updated. Whatever the reason, that restriction meant that Seymour had to fly via Seattle, with an overnight stay, rather than flying non-stop to San Francisco from New York.

For the first two flights, Seymour had a travelling companion: Magnolia. Although they probably had little interaction at The Garden, he encouraged her at Seattle, after which they parted ways so she could travel to her new home via Phoenix.

Today's Featured Map shows Seymour's four-day odyssey, including a two-night stay at The ARK in New York, plus Magnolia's trip to Phoenix.

References and additional information:

• Tattered Paws and Golden Hearts Rescue
  • About Us
  • Seymour
• The ARK at JFK
• Turkish Airlines
• Alaska Airlines
• Pilots N Paws
• Planespotters.net
  • TC-LJE Turkish Airlines Boeing 777-3F2ER
  • N495AS Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-990ER(WL)
  • N615AS Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-790(WL)