Three sources, three answers: who decides the rules for your pet’s flight

Why the answers disagree

The airline, your veterinarian and the government of the country you are flying to are not three opinions on the same question. Each one is authoritative inside its own boundary and has no standing outside it. Most of the confusion in pet travel is the sound of a question landing at the wrong desk.

The second reason is time. Entry rules for animals change, and they change without announcing themselves to the people who answered your question last year. A forum thread from a previous season, a colleague who moved before the rules were revised, and a phone agent reading an internal note can each be describing a real version of the same rule. Only one of them is the version in force on your travel day.

What the airline decides

The airline decides whether your pet travels on that aircraft, on that route, on that date. That covers the cabin or the hold, the crate’s size and construction, breed restrictions, temperature limits, how many animals are allowed on a given flight, and what happens on a connection.

Two details cause most of the trouble here. Policies are specific to the route and often to the aircraft, so an answer that is true for one flight is not automatically true for the next one. And on a codeshare it is the airline actually operating the flight whose rules apply — not the one whose name is on your ticket.

An airline accepting your pet is not the same as a country admitting it.

What the airline does not decide is whether your pet will be allowed into the country at the other end. Acceptance at check-in is a transport decision. It is not entry permission, and it is not a reading of the destination’s law.

What your veterinarian decides

Your vet establishes and certifies facts about your animal: the examination, the identification, the vaccination record, treatments given and their dates, and samples sent to a laboratory when a test is required. The vet signs the certificate. For a departure from the United States, that certificate generally has to be issued by a veterinarian accredited by the USDA before it can be endorsed.

What a veterinarian does not own is the destination’s list of requirements. A clinic that prepares export files every week will usually know them well. A clinic that has never had reason to look them up has no way of knowing them, and it is not their job to. Asking a vet to confirm a foreign country’s import conditions is asking a correct question at the wrong desk — and it is where a great many trips quietly go wrong.

What the destination decides

The country you are flying to sets the requirements, and its border officers apply them when you land. That is the decision everything else is preparing for. Requirements attach to your pet’s species and age, to the country you are travelling from, and sometimes to whether the animal is travelling with you or as cargo.

Transit counts as well. A country where you only change planes can have conditions of its own, and they are easy to miss because nobody thinks of an airport they never leave as a destination.

Where the US side fits in

Two different federal agencies are involved, and they are routinely mistaken for each other:

• Leaving the United States. The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service publishes what each destination requires and endorses the health certificate before departure — see APHIS Pet Travel (opens in a new tab).
• Bringing a dog into the United States. The entry rules for dogs are set by the CDC — see CDC guidance on dogs entering the US (opens in a new tab). The rules changed in 2024, which is why older advice on this particular question is worth distrusting on sight.

The state you land in can add requirements of its own. So can the airline, on top of everything above. Nobody is contradicting anybody: the layers simply stack.

How to check a rule yourself

You can do this without us, and if you only ever read one section of this page, read this one. The order matters more than the effort.

• Start with the destination, not the airline. Find the government body that publishes import conditions for animals in the country you are entering. That is the desk the decision actually belongs to.
• Pin down your pet’s category. Rules split by species, by age, by the country you are coming from, and by whether the animal travels with you or unaccompanied. A rule read in the wrong category is worse than no rule at all.
• Read the departure side second. For a US departure, that means what must be issued, by whom, and what has to be endorsed before you go.
• Read the airline’s published policy last, for the carrier operating your flight and for your specific route.
• Ask for the answer in writing, with a date on it. A saved page, an email, a reference number. Anything you can put back in front of the person who said it.
• Check again close to departure. The version that matters is the one in force on the day you travel.

Each of those steps produces something you can keep: a dated page, a signed form, an email with a name on it. If a step produces only somebody’s recollection, it is not finished.

What written confirmation actually looks like

It has a date, a name or a reference, and it describes your case rather than a general one: your route, your flight, your pet. A screenshot of a policy page saved on the day you read it counts. A certificate signed and endorsed counts. “They said on the phone it would be fine” does not, and the counter on departure day is a poor place to discover the difference.

That is most of what we do. We clear the destination’s requirements line by line, confirm your route in writing with the airline before a ticket is booked, and keep the whole file with one named person, so there is one place to ask rather than three. It does not make the rules simpler. It means you are not the one holding three answers and guessing which is current.

If you want the timing side of this, it is set out in how early to start preparing your pet’s flight. Shorter answers to the questions we get most often are on the FAQ page.

Questions we get on this

Who has the final say on whether my pet can enter a country?

The destination’s own authorities, applied by its border officers on arrival. An airline accepting your pet at check-in is not entry permission, and a veterinary certificate is evidence rather than a decision. Everything done before departure exists to satisfy that one decision at the border.

Can I rely on what the airline’s phone line tells me?

Treat it as a starting point and ask for the same answer in writing against your specific flight. Pet policies differ by aircraft, route and season, and on a codeshare it is the operating carrier’s rules that apply rather than those of the airline that sold you the ticket.

Can my vet confirm the destination’s requirements?

Your veterinarian certifies your pet’s health, identification and vaccination record, and signs the certificate. The requirements themselves come from the destination country, and a certificate for a departure from the United States is endorsed by USDA APHIS. A clinic that does this every week will know both; most have had no reason to.