Companion Animals Flying

Giving your pet a sedative reduces the animal’s ability to regulate its own body temperature should your pet be exposed to weather extremes, generally while being loaded and unloaded or held over on connecting flights. This can be very dangerous for the pet. A heavily sedated pet can also get its nose pressed into a corner of the kennel reducing its ability to breath. If your dog is accustomed to being in a crate while traveling the flight experience will not be that stressful unless the animal is extremely unsound mentally, in which case you may need to reconsider sending it by air.

Most, if not all airlines have restrictions on specific breeds of dogs and cats. The original reason for breed-bans was for the protection of animals bred to have an extremely short muzzle. These animals experience a much higher mortality rate when flown due to issues associated with heat and breathing issues. According to a Department of Transportation 2015 report, over one half of the dogs which died in flight over a five-year period were short-muzzled breeds.

More recently, “aggressive” breeds have been added to lists of banned breeds due to cases of dogs breaking out of crates while traveling. United Air Lines states on their web-site that these breeds are banned “since they have physical or behavioral traits that put them at a higher risk to be negatively affected by air travel.” This is a very politically correct way of saying they don’t want to deal with the aggressive and/or destructive behavior associated with some high-energy working breeds.

United Airlines lists the following dog and cat breeds (or animals which appear to show a predominance of one of these breeds) as banned. Before booking with any airline go to their website and check the breed ban list. If you are wondering why UAL has the most severe restrictions, a history of a higher than industry standard pet death rate and wide coverage of a 2018 incident in which a flight attendant caused the death of a puppy by ordering the owner to lock it in an overhead bin seems to have caused the airline to take these actions. Industry wide, the death rate for pets traveling in cargo is 0.47 out of every 10,000. (DOT report 2017). A traveling animal is actually at more risk on the ground, awaiting loading, than in the air. All airlines have minimums and maximums at which they cut off transport of live animals. It can be impossible, for instance, to fly a pet into Las Vegas, Phoenix, or Palm Springs in summer. The most important safety precaution you can take for your pet is to book a direct flight, even if it means a bit more time driving to and from the airport. Most airlines require at least two to three hours wait time between flights (to avoid missed flights in case of delays), and that means a long delay for your pet.