Transporting a falcon: cabin, hold, routing

A compliant file can still fail at the last step, over transport. It is the least well-equipped stage of the market, and the one where accumulated delays cause documents to expire.

Cabin or hold

Several Gulf carriers allow falcons in the cabin, something that exists for almost no other species. Conditions are specific to each airline and change without notice. As an example, Qatar Airways allows one falcon per passenger, in economy class only, with a maximum of six birds on narrow-body aircraft and twelve on wide-body aircraft, the bird having to be hooded, tethered and placed on the floor in front of the seat.

This information is an example, not a general rule: always check the conditions in force with the airline at the time of booking.

The routing is part of the file

The route actually flown must match the one declared on the health documents and on the air waybill. A stopover outside the declared route, a diversion, or a last-minute flight change can invalidate the health certificate and hold the bird up on arrival.

This is why a cheap connecting flight is often a poor choice for this kind of shipment.

The clocks that are running

Transport is the only stage where all three clocks are running at the same time:

• CITES export permit: six months
• avian influenza and Newcastle disease tests: thirty days
• clinical examination: seven days

A ten-day flight delay can therefore cause the clinical examination to expire while the rest of the file remains valid. This is exactly the kind of deadline that becomes invisible in a message thread and forces everything to start over.

Departing from the United States

A wildlife shipment must go through a designated port and be the subject of a prior declaration to the Fish and Wildlife Service, with forty-eight hours' notice. This point is frequently discovered too late by sellers shipping from a non-designated airport.