Bears on Board

Unitrans is well-known for its general and oversized cargo transportation. However, as a company concerned about animal welfare, it open-heartedly responded to a request to transport two bear cubs to Bucharest, Romania.

Although it has been already the third shipment of live animals for Unitrans after elephants and lemurs, it was unique and requested special attention:

1. The special thing with this shipment was that “the cargo” was getting bigger and heavier every week. And it is not common to weigh bears as it is usually done with other general cargoes. So after the preliminary transportation arrangements, which took about 5 months, it turned out the bears are about 100kg heavier than expected.

2. In addition, the airline was used to transport small animals like dogs and cats. Therefore, long discussions and persuasions took place before the airline was convinced to transport the bears.

3. Another feature of this shipment was, on the one hand, the shortest possible transit time in order the bears have not been exhausted. There was no direct flight from Yerevan to Bucharest, thus a transit flight have been arranged with waiting time of four hours and ten minutes at a transit airport.

On the other hand, this transit time could hardly suffice for EU veterinary checking procedures . It was a big risk, as any question in documentation could cause delays, and the bears could have missed their next flight to the final destination. For this purpose, a pre-approval from the transit check-point according to the cargo documents was obtained.

Therefore, the whole team of responsible personnel involved in this transportation at the points of origin, transit, and destination, including the shipper and the airline representatives, were at call – each at their places – to ensure smooth handling and transportation of the bears on the agreed day and be prepared to take decision on the spot, if necessary. The responsible personnel at the Yerevan customs terminal also acted “with understanding”, allowing the bears to arrive at the terminal within a special time interval, which is usually not applied to other cargoes.

As a result of the well-coordinated and wakeful work of the entire team in different countries, the bears were smoothly loaded into the airplane in Yerevan, passed all the required transit veterinary checkings on time, and were transported to the airport of Bucharest without any problems. And less than within two and a half hours after the airplane has landed at the destination airport the Bucharest handling team finalized the customs clearance and terminal handling and loaded the bears on a dedicated truck.

Thus, the transportation of the two bear cubs became a good example of interaction between human beings for the sake of animals, once affected by humans and now dependent on them, which makes us feel its true importance. As a result of this cooperation the bears now live freely and, we believe, happily at a bear sanctuary.