About 75% of people who purchase Rosehall puppies travel to the farm to pick up their pup. Most by car, some by commercial air travel and some by private plane. However you get here we encourage buyers to come and see us and the dogs and get a better sense of what we do here. We also understand that not everyone can make the journey to the Highland Rim of the Cumberland Plateau in east Tennessee. . . so the remaining 25% of the puppies travel to their new homes via special handling shipping with one of the major airlines.
Anyone who travels by air knows that there have been quite drastic changes in the airlines' operations in the past decade. Lower demand for air travel and outrageous increases in fuel costs are causing the airlines to 'tighten their financial belts.' We expect to continue to see airlines cutting service to smaller markets . . . in cases abandoning some smaller cities altogether and in other cases reducing the number of flights to many destinations. The small communter jets that were efficient ways to service small markets when fuel was less expensive are now proving to have higher operating costs per seat than the big planes. Wherever possible, airlines will consolodate service to fewer flights to a destination hoping to make use of fewer bigger planes replacing more of the smaller planes.
What this means for puppy travel (in addition to higher costs for priority/special handling service) is that we will have fewer options of flights to put the puppies on. People who live near smaller cities may have to drive greater distances to get to an airport that offers pet transportation services. (Not all airports that have commercial passenger service will offer priority pet cargo service.) The small markets that continue to have puppy flight service available will find that with fewer flights available, we'll be fighting greater competition for the very few puppy slots available in the cargo space so in more and more cases we will find that we must ship when we can, not when it's convenient.
Higher costs, increasing travel to meet the flights and less convenient scheduling might make it more attractive for some people to come and pick up their puppies from the farm. For those who still can't travel to us, be assured that we will continue working with buyers who want us to arrange safe air travel for their puppy. Let's all hope that it won't become too frustrating an endeavor!
Check out our web site at www.rosehallkennel.com Look for us on Facebook too! . . . Eliot
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