It’s become exceedingly difficult to get your dog on a commercial flight, which is why a new, luxurious, albeit quite expensive, chartered air service for pets may be quite appealing to some pooch owners.
BARK, which is a company that primarily sells dog food and toys, has officially launched an air travel service for dogs, dubbed BARK Air. The company announced the service last month and is scheduled to launch its first flight Thursday, CBS reports. For a hefty price, pet owners can now book a ticket with their pet to one of several different destinations. The company operates its service through Talon Air, a private jet chartering company, and says that it offers the “white glove experience typical of a human’s first-class experience and redirected all that pampering to pooches.”
“When we started BARK in 2011, we were on a mission to disrupt the dog space and create products designed for dogs and their humans,” said Matt Meeker, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at BARK, in a recent press release. “We are excited to take the insights we’ve learned over the years to create an experience that is truly dog-first, which is drastically different from just accepting dogs – from the ground to the skies.”
To advertise the supposed benefits of this service, BARK Air’s website features a truly hilarious video that feels like a mockup between an SNL skit and a David Lynch short. In it, we see images from a BARK-chartered flight: in one scene, a friendly, smiling stewardess serves a confused-looking dog a tennis shoe on a silver platter; in another scene, a dog sips sparkling water from a crystal chalice; in yet another scene, a dog gets its hair blow-dried by a professional hair stylist.
Whether BARK flights truly involve that much pampering is unclear at this point. I’m sure we’ll find out soon. Unfortunately, the prices for this elite pet service will likely prove prohibitively expensive for most people. Currently, a one-way ticket for a dog-and-human combo has a pay floor of something like $6,000. The service also appears to have a pretty limited selection of locations to choose. You can select one of four destinations: London, Los Angeles, New York, or Paris. So, yeah, that’s not great.
Suffice it to say, it’d be really nice if BARK’s prices came down and it diversified its list of destinations since it’s become exceedingly difficult to get your dog on a commercial plane in recent years. The pandemic spurred numerous airlines—including United and Delta—to temporarily halt their pet programs, and, since then, restrictions on animals have gotten exceedingly frustrating. We definitely need a cheap and easy pet travel option, although it’s unclear if BARK is it.
