Flying sucks. From the moment you leave your house in a rush to the moment you land you’re surrounded by miserable sweaty humans who are also equally excited for their travel day to be over. Adding a dog into your travel day must make things ten times as stressful, as airports aren’t exactly dog friendly. To address that problem, the company who brought you BarkBox has started Bark Air, a new airline that’s committed to providing dog owners and their precious pups with a less stressful, more dog-focused flying experience, all for a mere several thousand dollars.
Bark Air currently offers one-way flights from Los Angeles to New York for $6,000, or from New York to London for $8,000. Want a round-trip flight? Double those prices. While the cost is incredibly exclusionary for most people in the world, Bark Air does offer an elevated experience. The planes are chartered jets, with passengers limited to 10 humans and their dogs. There is food and beverage service for all the canines onboard, including doggie champagne, and the staff will even clean up after your dog. If you’re a rich and eccentric dog owner living in LA, New York, or London, please call me, because I am poor and single. I mean, your flying experience just got a lot more special. NPR reports,
Potential customers were quick to bemoan the cost, with one social media user joking that her pup would need to start selling “paw pics” to make it work.
Meeker [CoFounder and CEO of Bark Matt Meeker] acknowledged that “the price is high, and it’s too high.” But he said innovations, especially related to transportation, often become less expensive over time — and he hopes that will be the case with BARK Air, too.
“We have pretty clear ways of bringing those prices down if the demand is there, and that’s what we aim to do,” he added. “We want to make this affordable and accessible for as many dogs as possible.”
On BARK Air, the drinks come in bowls, leashes replace seat belts, champagne is made of chicken broth and the bathroom is, well, anywhere.
“When they feel they need to go, they go,” Meeker said of the dog. “And then we clean up after them. And then we clean the plane between every turn.”
It’s one of the many unique perks — and logistical challenges — of an airline for dogs. BARK has partnered with a New York-based charter company called Talon Air, which provides the pilots, flight crew and plane, a Gulfstream V.
Meeker went so far as flying from Florida to New York in a dog crate below the passenger cabin of a commercial plane as a PR stunt to show the injustices that face crated dogs on long flights. He told NPR that he has his eye on a Boeing 747 with half the cabin converted to carry cargo to bring down costs, but that’s not the case just yet. He also said that his team has a design that would feature private cabins and a central dog park for the pups and a bar for the owners, so the future looks bright for wealthy folks and their lucky dogs.
Is an airline devoted to ferrying the one percent and their pampered pooches around the globe really what the world needs right now? No, but I am a dog person and I think dogs deserve the world for providing unconditional love. If you’ve got the funds and you’ve got a furry friend you want to see the world with, then take your dog along on your next trip between Los Angeles, New York, or London.