Travelling with a pet, and the questions to settle first

Three separate permissions

Flying with an animal means satisfying three parties who do not talk to each other: the airline, which decides whether the animal can be carried and how; the destination country, which decides whether it may enter; and, on a connection, every country in between.

They can disagree. An airline that will carry a cat in the cabin does not thereby get it into a country that requires a rabies titre test months in advance, and a country that will admit a dog says nothing about whether the aircraft has a hold that is pressurised and heated for it.

Start with the destination, not the airline. Import rules take the longest to satisfy and are the only ones you cannot negotiate.

In the cabin, in the hold, or as cargo

In the cabin is the easiest and the most limited: a small animal in a carrier that fits under the seat in front, with a hard limit on combined weight that is usually somewhere around eight kilograms, and a limit on how many animals the cabin takes on any one flight. That last one is why it is booked early.

In the hold means a checked animal in a container meeting live-animal standards. It is how most dogs travel, and it is the option most affected by temperature: many airlines suspend it in summer and winter on particular routes, because the risk is on the tarmac rather than in the air.

As cargo is a separate booking on a separate document, and it is what larger animals and some breeds are restricted to regardless of size.

Breed restrictions are a real constraint

Short-nosed breeds — bulldogs, pugs, Persian cats and their relatives — are refused in the hold by many airlines and restricted by others. The reason is that they breathe less efficiently under heat and stress, and both are worse in a hold than in a living room.

This is not a formality to be argued around at the desk. It is a written policy, it is checked, and an animal refused at the airport is a trip that ends there.

The paperwork, roughly

Microchip first, then rabies vaccination — in that order, because a vaccination recorded before a chip usually does not count. Then whatever the destination adds: a titre test with a waiting period, a health certificate issued within a few days of travel, an import permit, a treatment for tapeworm administered in a specific window before arrival.

The waiting periods are what catch people. A titre test can require months between the blood draw and the flight, which makes this a decision taken before the trip is booked rather than after¹.