Transporting Rescue animals over rockies

[milotron]

Howdy,

My wife is involved with several animal rescues and, always wanting to justify having a plane, have offered to transport critters for her when it comes up.  I have had to turn down a couple of recent requests as we are in Victoria and the cats were coming from Saskatchewan and needed to cross the Rockies. Most MEAs are around 13k or higher. What is the tolerance for cats and dogs to this kind of altitude for an hour or so?   I know that I need the O2 to be legal, but also don't want to cause further distress the these animals.

Taking low level VFR corridors is not really an option as these requests never come up during nice days like that.

 

Thoughts?

 

Also, I got my CPL rating completed last week! Woohoo!  Working on my multi rating now...

 

iain

[kpaul]

23 minutes ago, milotron said:

, I got my CPL rating completed last week! Woohoo!  Working on my multi rating now.

Congratulations 

I have flown for pilots n paws a few times, all of the dogs spend most of the time sleeping.

I also fly with my dog quite a bit.  We were at 13k departing Montana for a short time.  He didn't seem any worse for wear after the flight.  Your probably ok if you stay in the low teens and descend as soon as practical.  Extended periods in the high teens would not be good, although the animal would certainly sleep well.

[KSMooniac]

We just flew KS to WA and back a few weeks ago with our dog, including some extended time at 13.5 and it didn't seem to bother her at all FWIW.

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[kortopates]

My last lab did just great at the upper teens without O2 for flights that where over an hour at altitude but less than 2 hrs. I think first officer Bailey logged over a thousand hours flying with us and lived to 13 y.o. He didn't really sleep on our flights, but would sit up in climb and especially as soon as we began a descent he would sit up to look at where we where. But in cruise his favorite pass time was putting his head on the arm rest between the front seats to get his nose up next to us. The highest I would take him was 17.5 for short duration but mostly 15.5 to 16.5K where he seemed to do just fine. Then after arriving at our mountain destination, after having come from sea level he sure didn't act tired. He would run around at 9.5K fetching sticks and swimming in a mountain lakes as I huffed and puffed carrying a heavy pack of gear. Before our first flight we visited the vet and the only thing I remember about that now is that he provided a sedative for his first flights in case he was anxious. But he never needed it, he was just thrilled to go with us. Years later they had O2 for dogs, but by then I saw no point - at least for in the teens. YMMV.

[milotron]

Thanks. All good. It sounds like if I minimize the higher altitude stuff we should be fine. Now to see how many carriers we can stuff into plane....

 

iain

[carusoam]

The dog’s math skills may deteriorate at altitude... they may have difficulty differentiating colors... 

Does PnP have guidelines for this?

See if @Samurai Husky has input on this topic.  Sam spent a fair amount of time researching dogs and flight... some years ago.

Best regards,

-a-