Airline Committee and Airline Transport Carriers

 

 

 

Pat Vezino is the Airline Committee Chair and Betty is a member on the committee.   Pat has done tremendous amount of work with the airlines, currently she is in the process of getting the metal rabbit carriers to be included in the International Air Transport Association (IATA)
regulation document. 

 

Pat has spent hours and hours and hours on this task.   Though still work in progress, her effort has been recognized by ARBA.   President Josh Humphries presents Pat with the Distinguish Service Award during the ARBA membership meeting at the convention.

Here is a part of her work:

https://www.arba.net/PDFs/airline_ref.pdf  

there are much more to come.



 

If you wonder what kinds of rabbit transport carriers are accepted by IATA, here is an example.  It's constructed of wood with solid floor.    Randy bought the carrier and the "Poles" from UK.    The "Poles" in UK is the Britannia Petite in the US.
 



This is another kind of rabbit transport carrier accepted by IATA, constructed of metal and wood with solid bottom.

 

Top view.


 



The owner of this carrier bought it from the person who imported Netherland Dwarf from Europe.   Each compartment is small but suitable for the ND.

 

 

The two units are clamped together and houses 12 Netherland Dwarf rabbits.    Airline cargo considers this as one unit and charges by the weight.

 



We are familiar with this kind of carriers.   However this design is not currently in the IATA document.    Though we use these carriers for shipping and for convention flying for a long time, it's a hit and miss.   We had either experienced or heard of horror stories that the rabbits were stranded at the airport because the carriers were not accepted by the cargo agents or check-in counter agents.  

One of the method of using these carriers is to put them inside a dog kennel.   The hard plastic dog kennels are listed in the IATA document as an accepted means of transporting animals.   With the dog kennel, the weight significantly increases thus the cost of shipping.   Some breeders dislike using a dog kennel saying that it limits the air circulation.  

The Airline Committee Chair Pat Vezino is working hard to get this design included in the document. 

By the way, if anyone wonders why there are PVC pipes added to the exterior of the carriers.  The PVC pipes are used as "bumpers" to reduce the possibility of rabbits getting injured if the carrier unit bumps into another carrier or other objects.