Domestic Pet Shipping

Airline pet policies changed substantially over the last few years and the published pages have not always kept up. Several carriers have withdrawn checked baggage for pets entirely, leaving the cabin for small animals and manifested cargo for everything else. Others limit live animal acceptance to specific aircraft types, which quietly rules out whole routes served by regional jets.

Cabin space is capped per flight at a low number, usually single digits, and it is booked by phone after the human ticket rather than online. On a busy route in summer those slots go weeks ahead. We check the operating carrier and the aircraft rather than the marketing airline, because on a codeshare those are frequently not the same company and only one of them decides whether your pet boards.

This is the constraint least often mentioned up front and the one most likely to move a flight. Airlines will not accept pets in the hold when ground temperatures at any point on the itinerary fall outside a safe band, and the limits apply at origin, at every connection and at the destination.

In practice that means the southern hubs close to hold travel through much of the summer, commonly May through September, and the northern ones close on cold-weather grounds in winter. Booking around it is straightforward once you know: early morning and late evening departures in summer, midday in winter, and a routing with as few connections as possible so there are fewer airports where a temperature reading can stop the trip.

A pet in the hold needs a rigid IATA-style container, ventilated on the required sides, closed with metal hardware rather than plastic clips, and large enough for the animal to stand fully upright, turn around and lie down naturally. Counter staff measure the animal against the crate, and undersizing is the most common reason a pet is turned away on the day.

Buying a size up is not the fix either. An oversized crate lets the animal slide in turbulence, it costs more in freight because domestic cargo prices on dimensional weight, and on some aircraft it will not fit through the hold door. We size the crate to the animal and check it against the aircraft on the booked routing.

Most states require a Certificate of Veterinary Inspection for an animal entering from another state, and every airline requires one for a pet flying in the hold regardless of what the state asks. Your own veterinarian issues it, and no federal endorsement is needed for a move that stays within the country.

The catch is the validity window. Most certificates are valid for ten days from the examination, and a handful of states run shorter. A certificate obtained early to be safe is a certificate that can expire before travel day, particularly if the flight moves for weather. We time the appointment against the booked flight rather than against the move date.

Hawaii is a domestic destination that behaves like an international one. The state is rabies-free and runs its own quarantine program, which means a microchip, two rabies vaccinations, an OIE-FAVN blood test and a waiting period before the animal may arrive, plus documents submitted to the Animal Quarantine Station in advance.

Get the sequence right and the pet is released at the airport on arrival. Get it wrong and it goes into quarantine at the owner expense. Plan a Hawaii move on a timeline of months, not weeks, and read our Hawaii pet requirements page before booking anything.

Domestic moves fail in a small number of predictable ways, and none of them are dramatic.

A crate is measured at the counter and found half an inch short, and the pet does not fly. A health certificate written twelve days before an already-delayed flight expires in the gap. A temperature embargo closes a connecting hub the morning of the flight, and a pet booked through that hub sits while a pet on a nonstop goes. And a cabin slot that was never actually confirmed, only assumed, turns out to belong to somebody else.

All four are avoidable at the planning stage and none of them are fixable at the airport, which is the whole argument for handling a domestic move properly rather than improvising it.

We move pets between cities across the United States, with a page for each metro covering the local cargo facilities, the airlines that accept live animals there and the endorsement office serving the area. If you are driving instead, or deciding whether to, our guides to shipping a dog to another state and shipping a cat to another state cover the trade-offs in detail.

For species-specific requirements see dog transport, cat transport and bird and exotic pet transport. Moving abroad instead? Start with international pet shipping.

Tell us where the pet is going, the species and breed, the approximate weight and your dates. We will tell you whether flying or driving suits better, what it costs either way, and what has to happen before travel day.