Age
Dogs and cats have to be at least eight weeks old and fully weaned before they travel. No exception is offered for a shorter flight.
Live animals
How much does it cost to ship a dog on a plane?
Nobody here will hand you a figure for the dog, and any site that does is guessing. An airline cargo desk prices a live animal off the crate it travels in, the route and the month of the year, and it can decline the booking on any of the three before price is even discussed. What follows is what two US carriers and the federal animal agency publish, all read on 2026-07-29, plus genuine parcel prices for an empty crate that show why crate size is the lever worth pulling.
Airline pages read 2026-07-29Crates priced as parcelsNo animal label sold here
Not a parcel job
Every parcel network in the country refuses a dog by name. What is left is an airline cargo desk with its own calendar and its own refusals.
The parcel carriers say no, and say it plainly
Before anything about price, the field has to be narrowed. Three networks handle almost every box that moves in the United States, and not one of them will take a dog from a household sender. The wording is theirs, read on the date shown.
| Network | What it publishes | Where that leaves a dog |
|---|---|---|
| USPS | “Warm-blooded animals, except for adult birds and specified day-old birds under the specific conditions in this section, are not mailable.” Section 525.2 then names dogs or puppies in its own line. | Nonmailable. There is no service, no counter and no form. |
| FedEx | “Traditional pets such as dogs, cats, birds, or hamsters cannot be shipped with FedEx.” Fish, non-venomous reptiles and amphibians, and insects that neither bite nor sting are the accepted end of the list. | Refused by category, not by packaging. |
| UPS | Live animals sit among the commodities UPS accepts only on a contractual basis, for shippers with regular volume and the ability to comply with all applicable laws and regulations. | Theoretically possible for a laboratory or a breeding operation with an agreement. Not for one dog and one owner. |
That narrowing matters because it removes the cheap options first. Whatever a dog costs to move, it is not going to be compared against a ground parcel rate, and the sites that quote a range without saying which service produced it are usually mixing the two.
What an airline decides before it decides a price
Airline cargo is where a dog actually flies, and the booking clears a series of gates that have nothing to do with money. Two US carriers publish theirs in detail, and they do not agree with each other, which is itself the useful finding.
| Gate | American Airlines Cargo | Delta Cargo |
|---|---|---|
| Who may book | A customer moving a pet from outside the United States is required to go through an IATA-regulated freight forwarder or a professional pet shipper. | Shipments are being accepted only for active US Military and US State Department Foreign Service personnel traveling on active permanent change of station orders. |
| Ground temperature | Warm-blooded animals are carried when ground temperatures are between 45 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit, and refused above 85 or below 20. | Pets are not shipped when the temperature is above 80 degrees Fahrenheit or below 20 degrees Fahrenheit while the animal is on the ground at any point. |
| Snub-nosed breeds | A long named list is restricted, running from Boston Terrier, Boxer and Bulldog through Cane Corso, Chow Chow, Mastiff, Pekingese, Pug, Shar Pei and Shih Tzu. | Brachycephalic dogs, cats and their mixes are not permitted on Delta or Delta Connection flights at all. |
| Sedation | Household dogs and cats that have been sedated or tranquilized are not accepted, including animals that merely appear to have been. | Not stated on the page read |
| Flight length | Warm-blooded animals are not carried on any single flight of 12 hours or more. | Not stated on the page read |
| Booking route | A parcel tier exists for a combined pet and kennel weight under 100 pounds in a kennel no larger than 36 by 26 by 28 inches. | A separate booking from the traveler's own reservation, placed with the Delta Cargo customer service center. |
Read the Delta column and the eligibility line does most of the work: for a civilian moving house, that airline is not on the list this season regardless of budget. Read the American column and the calendar does it: a July booking out of Phoenix or a January booking into Minneapolis runs into a ground temperature band that no amount of paperwork widens.
Why the crate, not the dog, sets the bill
Cargo is sold by the space something occupies, and a kennel is mostly air with a dog in the middle of it. We cannot show you an airline's live animal rate, but we can show the same physics on a network we do quote against, by pricing two empty plastic crates as ordinary parcels on one lane.
| Crate | Cheapest quote | Everything else returned |
|---|---|---|
| Carrier for a small dog 24 × 17 × 15 in, 9 lb | $53.61 UPS Ground | FedEx Ground Economy $56.18, UPS Ground Saver $75.37, FedEx Ground $90.43, UPS 3 Day Select $92.90 |
| Crate for a 50 lb dog 36 × 25 × 27 in, 22 lb | $231.78 UPS Ground | UPS 3 Day Select $396.74, UPS 2nd Day Air $583.37, FedEx Ground $630.88, UPS 2nd Day Air A.M. $680.66 |
The big crate weighs 22 lb on a bathroom scale and prices like a piece of furniture. Its outside measurements work out to 24,300 cubic inches, and past a certain size every parcel network bills the room a box takes up rather than the number the scale returns. Going one crate size down is worth more than anything else a sender controls.
The proof of that sits in a second run. We quoted the same 24 by 17 by 15 inch carton twice on the same day, once at 9 lb and once at 12 lb, and all five prices came back identical to the cent. Three extra pounds changed nothing, because the tape measure had already settled the bill. An airline cargo desk applies the same logic to a kennel, which is why it will ask for the crate's outside dimensions before it will talk about a number, and why a dog that genuinely fits a smaller kennel flies for meaningfully less than the same dog with room to spare.
The crate, to the standard the airline measures against
Kennel rules are where most bookings actually fail, because a container bought online for travel is not automatically a container an airline accepts. These are the requirements American Airlines Cargo publishes.
- Rigid plastic, metal or wood, with a metal grated end. Soft-sided and cardboard kennels are out, and so is anything built entirely of welded mesh, wire mesh or wicker.
- Ventilation on three sides for a domestic flight and four for an international one, with openings no larger than one inch square for a dog.
- A metal door, and no door set into the top of the kennel.
- Length measured against the animal: at minimum the length of the dog plus half the length of its leg, with room to stand, turn around normally, sit erect and lie in a natural position.
- Absorbent bedding on the floor, no more than three inches deep. Hay, wood shavings and straw are not allowed.
- Two dishes fixed inside for food and water, reachable without opening the door.
- Aircraft type caps the height. A 737 flight takes a 400 series kennel or smaller, while a 787 or 777 will take one up to 63 inches tall, so the plane on the routing quietly decides which dogs can go.
That last line is the one that surprises people. A connection routed through a smaller aircraft can make a perfectly legal kennel unbookable on the day, which is why pet shippers build itineraries around equipment rather than schedule.
The federal paperwork behind the booking
Above the airline sits the Animal Welfare Act, administered by the US Department of Agriculture. Its requirements are the floor every carrier builds on, and a missing certificate stops the animal at the counter no matter what was paid.
Health certificate
Signed by a licensed veterinarian within 10 days of the travel date, and it should state the animal's readiness along with the acceptable range of travel temperature.
Food and water
The owner or the owner's agent certifies that the animal was offered both within four hours of handing it over at the airport.
Marking is federal too. The kennel carries Live Animal lettering an inch high on the top and on at least one side, plus upright arrow labels showing which way it is meant to sit. Handlers work from those markings in a loud, fast environment, and a crate that does not carry them is a crate nobody knows to keep upright.
Where these rules come from
- USPS, Publication 52, section 525 — warm-blooded animals nonmailable, with dogs and puppies named. Read 2026-07-29.
- FedEx, How to Ship Live Animals — the accepted species and the sentence refusing traditional pets. Read 2026-07-29.
- UPS, Prohibited Items — live animals on the contractual acceptance list. Read 2026-07-29.
- American Airlines Cargo, Animals Policy and Restrictions and Kennel Guidelines — temperature band, breed list, sedation, flight length, parcel tier ceiling and the full kennel standard. Read 2026-07-29.
- Delta Air Lines, Shipping Your Pet — current eligibility, temperature limits, brachycephalic exclusion and the separate cargo booking. Read 2026-07-29.
- USDA APHIS, Preparing Pets for Air Travel — minimum age, health certificate window, food and water certification and kennel marking. Read 2026-07-29.
Airline animal policies move with the season and with the fleet, and the versions above are the ones live on the date given. Confirm with the carrier that will actually operate the flight before you buy a crate.
Common questions
Can a dog be shipped by USPS, UPS or FedEx?
No. Postal standards make warm-blooded animals nonmailable and name dogs and puppies outright, FedEx states that traditional pets such as dogs and cats cannot be shipped with it, and UPS keeps live animals on a contract-only list that a household sender never reaches.
What actually decides the price of flying a dog?
The outside dimensions of the crate first, then the route, then the season. Cargo is billed on the space a container occupies, so the same dog in a roomier crate is a materially larger bill on the same flight.
Is there a temperature that stops the flight?
Yes, and the two carriers read for this page set it differently. American Airlines Cargo moves warm-blooded animals when ground temperatures sit between 45 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Delta does not ship pets when it is above 80 or below 20 degrees at any ground point on the trip.
Which dog breeds get refused?
Snub-nosed dogs, broadly. Delta states that brachycephalic dogs, cats and their mixes are not permitted at all, and American Airlines Cargo publishes a named list running from Boston Terrier and Boxer through Pug, Shar Pei and Shih Tzu.
Can I sedate my dog for the flight?
No. American Airlines Cargo states it will not accept household dogs and cats that have been sedated or tranquilized, and a sedated animal cannot brace itself if the crate is tilted or set down hard.