First Flight with T’Way Air

I recently made my first flight with T’Way Air as a pet in cabin. As I mentioned earlier on my blog, they only recently started allowing pets in cabin on international flights. So I believe I was one of, if not the, first dog to fly internationally with them. For all the rules of flying with them check out my earlier blog post.

Overall, I had a great experience with them. There are a lot of positives we took from flying with T’Way.

• Higher weight allowance than most airlines. At 9kg including carrier this is one of the higher weight limits allowed. On our first flight we were slightly over at 9.4kg. But this didn’t cause a problem. We did have some treats etc in the bag we could have taken out to make it under 9kg if needed.
• You have the option to pay to guarantee the seat next to you is free, giving you extra space. This is great, but it’s only available on the day of departure if there are free seats. See my suggestion for improvement below.
• You get a ‘frequent flyer’ pass. Once you do 3 international flights you get your 4th one free (pet fee not the human flight)! Or if you do 6 domestic flights you also get the same.
• All the staff at check in, boarding and on the flight were super happy to have a pet on board. They were all really helpful.

T’Way do make the statement that they are the most pet friendly airline. This is re iterated in their in flight magazine. I feel this is a bold statement, and there are a few improvements that could be made in order to make them totally stand out from the competition.

Suggestions for becoming the MOST pet friendly airline

• Firstly, at the moment you must call the call centre in order to add a dog to your booking for an international flight. I believe you can do this online for a domestic flight. So my first recommendation would be able to allow adding pet to your booking online during the booking process.
• Pets are currently only allowed in the economy cabin. This is fine for a short 2 hour flight, but for the longer 5-6 hours+ flights, it would be good to have the extra space of business class. As there are only 2 seats on either side in business class, you would be kept away from the other passengers.
• Dogs must remain fully in their carrier during the flight. It would be amazing if at the least you would be able to allow the dog to have it’s head out of the carrier. Whilst you obviously need to be respectful of other passengers, an idea could be to only allow this if you book the whole row of seats so as not to disturb other passengers.
• Allow to book an extra seat in advance, when you book your original tickets. The option to pay on the day for extra space is great, but you still run the risk that the flight is full so you can’t get this option. By offering the chance to book the seat in advance gives peace of mind to pet owners and also stops disturbance to other passengers who may be sat next to a pet who doesn’t really want to be.

The Ultimate

The ultimate suggestion to totally becoming the best pet friendly airline would be to have a dedicated pet seat/row. A seat where your pet can sit normally without the restraints of being in their carrier under the seat. Nok Air did something like this on a trial basis. They covered the seats and gave each passenger with a pet an approved pet carrier which sat on the seat next to the humans. It was a huge success and passengers paid extra for this (on top of the pet fee). If this became an option I am sure that T’Way would then become the most pet friendly airline.

Conclusion

Overall I had a great experience flying as a pet in cabin with T’Way Air. I’ve since done my return flight to Japan also, and that was also a great experience too. Hopefully, after a while they will review the details and add some of my suggestions 🙂

Let me know if you have travelled with them or plan to do so soon.

Don’t forget to check out my Amazon store (affiliate link) which has all the details all of my recommended products I use then travelling. You can check it out here.

Woof Woof, Wylie x

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