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amandaanderson2012-blog · 6 years ago

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Getting Pets to Okinawa

I went through so much stress while trying to figure out how I was going to get our two dogs over to Okinawa by myself. I wrote down my whole personal process of flying Air Mobility Command (AMC)/Patriot Express so I could ease the minds of any others who have to do this!

Obviously my experience is unique to me, but for the most part, I hope that my advice and experience can be useful for others during their process.

To start, click here if you need to learn all of the required steps and documentation needed for your pets: Importing Pets to Japan and also a cheat sheet: Importing Pets Sequence

** One thing that these documents don’t tell you, is that if you are flying AMC/Patriot Express, you do NOT have to submit an advanced notification form to Japan. Some people recommend it anyway, because it can’t hurt! In case something were to go wrong and you end up having to change your flight plans to a commercial flight, submitting the Advanced Notification Form would be beneficial. That being said, I didn’t submit one but that was my personal choice! **

** There are several different names for the military flight that you will take, AMC or Patriot Express, are what I most often heard. For this post, I will be referencing the flight as “AMC” because that is what it is labeled as and referred to at the airport. **

The AMC flight only leaves from the Seattle/SEATAC Airport in Washington. I did delayed dependent travel due to finishing school in Minnesota. Since I was flying after my husband with our two dogs, I had to travel solo and figure this out. We couldn’t afford to commercially fly our dogs from Minnesota to Seattle, so I rented a car and drove out there.

***If you are in this situation (with pets + luggage), you NEED someone to come with you to help! I wouldn’t have been able to do this without the help of a friend who came to assist me.

If you are renting a car: The car rental return location is not connected to the airport. It’s not far, but still...after returning your rental, you will need to take the shuttle bus from the car rental return location back to the terminal. I had a friend who lives near the Seattle airport, meet me when I got to the terminal to help me with my unloading process (two large suitcases, a carry-on, two large dogs + their two large kennels!) - Picture will be seen below -

Once at the departure location, I asked one of the volunteer workers for a large cart to load up my dogs kennels and luggage on. My dogs are large so I needed a longer cart to fit both kennels on and then I loaded my suitcases on top. After unloading my car, my friend stayed at the terminal with my dogs and luggage while I went to return my rental. Just follow the signs for “car rental return” out of the airport and it’ll lead you right to where you need to go. I just had to pull up, tell them my name and they asked if I wanted a printed receipt or email copy. Then I walked to the shuttle bus to return to the terminal.

While I was doing that, the volunteer worker at the airport terminal led my friend and pushed my cart of belongings to the USO. This is where I met them when I got back to the terminal.

The USO is on the Mezzanine level, just one level up from the ticketing/check-in counters. If you don’t know what the USO is, in basic terms, it’s a lounge for military members and their families to stay while waiting for flights or travel arrangements.

There are elevators or stairs that you can use to get up there. The USO is on the complete opposite side of the airport than the AMC departure spot is. When you drive up to the departures, AMC is the very last drop off spot at the end. The volunteer workers work for tips so I gave the guy $10 for pushing my things up there. Once at the USO, my friend left and I checked in at the front desk. All of the people working there are so friendly and helpful to answer any questions.

I arrived at the airport really early, I checked into the USO at around 6:30pm Wednesday night. (With the flight not leaving til 0850 Thursday morning).

Since it was a “flight night”, the lady told me that I wouldn’t be able to store my dog kennels in their luggage room because there would be so many people coming in that will need to store their luggage in there. So I left my dogs in their kennels right outside to the left of the USO entrance and sat with them out there on the bench for pretty much the whole night.

The nice thing about where the USO is located, is that there really wasn’t anyone up there in the hallway unless they were other military members/families coming in. So it was pretty quiet up there and I was able to leave my dogs out there if I wanted to go into the USO to get some food or drinks.

Side note!! I believe that at certain times of the day/night on overseas flight nights, the USO limits the people allowed in. So if you’re not active duty or traveling on orders, you might not be able to come in.. just so you know! Some people got turned away when they came by due to flight delays for their leisure travel and just wanted somewhere to hang out while they waited.

I was able to let my dogs out and just have them hang out with me outside of their kennels as long as they were leashed. This was nice, so I could let them stretch out and interact with them before the flight where they’d be kenneled for long hours.

There are two locations, one on each end of the airport outside the check-in counters, to let your dogs go to the bathroom. It’s a very tiny area it was mostly dirt/rock with bushes on it so it’s not the nicest place. But luckily my dogs aren’t too picky on where they go potty, so they were fine. There is a poop bag dispenser and garbage can put there in case you need to pick up after them!

While I was waiting, I decided to go down to the AMC (Air Mobility Command) office which is located against the back wall on the baggage claim level. There was a lady named Heather working and she gladly looked over my dogs’ paperwork to make sure I had everything I needed. That gave me piece of mind to know I would be okay.

0200 was when the check-in process started. One of the USO workers was directing people to make their way down to the check-in desk. I went down at about 0300, and again I needed a cart for my dog’s kennels. The USO has carts that you can use but make sure one is available for you. The airport worker wouldn’t let me keep my original cart upstairs with me, so I had to find a different one for checking in. At that time of the morning, the airport volunteers are not there, so it was really hard for me to find another cart (since they lock them all up). So if a USO worker can save a cart for you, have them do that! That will make your life easier if you have big kennels to haul.

Once I got downstairs with my dogs in their kennels and my luggage stacked on top, there was a lady specifically checking pet paperwork and kennel requirements. I hadn’t even gotten in line yet and she came to me to take my pets’ information.

This is the information that she needed from me:

Passport (the one issued by military aka No Fee Blue Passport)

Copy of official orders

Web orders (USMC)

Area clearance

For my pet paperwork, this is what she asked for:

Health certificates for pet (copy)

FAVN report for rabies titer (copy)

Rabies certificates signed by vet (copy)

**She did not want my dog’s original signed paperwork, she wanted COPIES ONLY**

Make sure you have several copies of everything. I had 5 copies of each piece of paperwork, plus the originals. Also, double check to make sure all the information about your pet matches correctly for each piece of paperwork. Make sure the microchip numbers are correct on each document!

She provided me with a plastic sleeve to put the pet documents in and it sticks to the top of the kennels. I had brought with gallon sized ziplock bags for this reason, but they provide you with them. I guess it doesn’t hurt to be over-prepared!

The price of taking your dogs is supposed to be determined by their weight... well, all she did was ask me how much each dog weighed with their kennels. So I gave my best estimated guess (100lb & 80lb) so it was $250 per dog for me.

From the AMC website, this is what the pet travel fees are:

A combined weight ≤ 70 lbs will be charged as one piece of excess baggage ($125).

A combined weight of 71-140 lbs will be charged as two pieces of excess baggage ($250)

The lady took my credit card right there and came back with my receipt to sign.

The AMC website can tell you all necessary requirements for your pet travel either in cabin or cargo. If they are traveling cargo, here’s what I found:

hard sided kennel

Ventilation on at least 3 sides (I purchased my kennels from Amazon) Link here: Aspen Pet Porter

The size I got for both of my dogs were the 70-90lb size, so they have enough room to stand completely up with 3 inches above their head/ears, lay down comfortably and to turn around in the kennel. Those are requirements from AMC when choosing a kennel. My shepherd/lab mix is a little bit too tall for the 70-90lb kennel (she fit fine, but did not have enough room above her head when she stood up according to the AMC requirements). So, instead of paying twice as much for the next size up in kennels, my dad helped make a kennel height extension with some 2 by 4 pieces of wood! We saved a lot of money by doing this.

More requirements:

Metal bolts to fasten the kennel together (my kennel came with metal bolts but plastic nuts that screwed on.. so I went and bought my own nuts and bolts at Home Depot.)

Make sure you have a bolt for every hole! The only issue I ran into during my pet check-in, was that she told me I needed a bolt in each hole in the back of my one dog’s kennel (Picture below).

I had a bolt in the two outer small holes, but not in the middle one... I figured it would be fine, because it’s not like my dog was going to escape! Lol. But luckily I was overly paranoid about things going wrong, so I had packed extra nuts and bolts! Phew! :)

Zip ties - they require you to zip tie the doors of the kennels before flight (I bought the reusable zip ties, so they don’t have to be cut... but they cut them off anyway when we landed in Yokota, so it doesn’t have to be the reusable ones!)

**please confirm with AMC to make sure what the up to date requirements are!! What I am listing is from my experience, and I have not recently looked what the updated requirements may be!**

Things that were not technically required, but recommended (and everyone with a pet had these) are:

Clip on dish that went on the inside of the kennel door. Link: Clip on Dish

Large non spill water containers that I zip tied from the outside of the kennel doors (giant hamster water things) I got mine at Walmart! Link here: Pet No Drip Water Bottles

Puppy pee pads - set on the bottom of the kennel and then a blanket on top (also bought at Walmart). In case your pet does have an accident, you can take these out when you stop and hopefully it will soak most of it up!

Once the lady took my paperwork and I paid for the dogs, I went in line for the luggage drop off. There is a separate line for families and for single military members during the check in process. I probably waited in line for an hour and a half. They weighed all of my bags, my carry on and personal item together and then my two check bags together. You are allowed two large checked bags not to exceed 70lb each. The weight of your carry-ons doesn’t matter, just the dimensions. I was told my carry-on needed to be no larger than 9x14x22” for total of 45inches. He also asked me how much I weigh.. lol. I was told that they just want to know the estimated weight of the plane when they get done, I guess?

Once I got my bags taken and I was checked in, I was told to keep my dogs with me until 0600 and I was to bring them back down to that same location where I checked in. So for the time being, I pushed them back upstairs to outside the USO and just hung out again until I had to bring them back.

At about 0530, I let them out to go potty one last time, and then pushed them back down to the check-in place. There are workers there to direct you on what to do. At this point is where I put the zip ties on and sat with them until they told me we could go. It was time to say goodbye to my pups until our first stop :(

Then the lady said we could go to the security line. The line wasn’t too bad. There are multiple security checkpoints. The lady told us to go through the security line near Jet Blue, which is towards the middle of the terminal.

Once I got through security, my gate was S12. (I don’t know if this is where the AMC flight leaves every single time or not, but this is what my experience was). You need to go downstairs to the tram that will take you to the S Gates. After getting through security, you will be at the A gates, the tram first stops at the B gates from there (which is where the AMEX Centurion Lounge is right across from gate B3.. for any of you AMEX platinum card holders! You can get into the lounge for free and get free food and drinks!) The tram then next stops at the S gates where you will get off at.

We started the boarding process around 0800. My flight was scheduled to leave at 0850. They boarded families with small children first, then higher ranks, then they called people by rows. Service members need their ID and boarding pass, family members needed their passports and boarding pass.

Flight:

The first flight is about 10 hours. After not sleeping for like 24 hours, I was ready to sleep on the plane!! The seats are nice and they recline significantly so you can relax. They have little TVs that you can watch movies or shows on and they provide you with: pillow, blanket, ear buds, two meals and drinks.

I slept for the first 7 hours of the flight lol... so I missed the first meal but the second one was good. I ate the chicken parmesan with noodles and vegetables. Also they had bread and butter, crackers and a cheese slice, potato salad and cheesecake! It wasn’t too bad considering it was prepackaged airline food!

We landed in Yokota first, we got off the plane as they told us to, right off onto the tarmac. Once inside the small airport they gave us directions of what to do/where to go and what time to be back. They then let us pet owners let out our pets for about a half an hour. There is a small fenced in grassy area that you can put them in to go to the bathroom and stuff. They also provided water in bowls which was really nice!

You can leave your stuff on the plane, bring any money or whatever if you want snacks at the vending machine inside. Not much for options. For pets - just bring their leashes and extra zip ties to re-fasten their kennel when you put them back in. I gave my pups plenty of water and a small amount of food to hold them over for the remainder of the trip. They did really well! No accidents in the kennel and they both seemed happy and normal! Phew!! What a relief, they were my number one concern in this whole process!

The layover was about 2 hours and then we boarded again and headed to Iwakuni. This flight is only about 1 hour and 45 min. I was surprised because we were able to let our dogs out on this stop as well! For over an hour! They had a grass area outside for them to be at and a spicket to give them water.

There was a Japanese man at a food truck outside so you could buy some food and drinks. I got myself a hot dog and a soda :)

Then off on our last flight, to land in our final destination: Okinawa!

We landed on Kadena Air Base, went through customs and then to the baggage claim. My dogs were already there waiting for me. You will see a counter where the pets are, with base veterinarian staff. I handed the base veterinarian staff my official paperwork for them. This is where they take the original copies of everything, including your pet’s Health Certificate. They will have you sign some forms, and tell you everything you need to know. You have 72 business hours to take your pets into the vet on Kadena Air Base to get looked over.

I landed in Okinawa on Friday night, so I didn’t take my dogs in until Monday morning. They have specific walk in hours for people who are there to have their pets get their initial inspection done. There is a long wait time, so get there early if possible! You’ll need another set of copies of your paperwork for the base vet as well. Make sure you have plenty of copies!!

My pups are now officially done with quarantine and they are doing well.

It was a lot of stress to deal with, but so worth having them out here with us for these 3 years! I hope this post helps anyone who is stressing about the process of PCSing with a pet!

Thanks for reading!

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