How to Measure your Pet for Airline Crate-Kennel

Planning a trip with your pet? Moving, relocating or just for fun? More and more these days people are traveling with pets of all colors, shapes, sizes and breeds. It can be very overwhelming the details needed to get your pet on a plane. Tickets, availability, how much money and the biggest item to figure out is……the crate.

It is not like you can put your pet in the car for a short trip to the store or the vet and any carrier will do. Mind you in the car you should be just as careful what you use as a pet travel crate or carrier. We are not all great drivers and everyone is always in a hurry so accidents can happen. Not fun to lose or injure a pet because they were not strapped in.  But we are focusing on pet air travel in this article. We can write an article on  pet car travel later.

The biggest problem we find and receive calls for is “what size crate for my pet?” Majority of the calls or emails will tell us the weight of the pet, what airline and want to know what size. The weight of the pet and crate are important when you scheduled a flight with your airline so they know how much total weight can be on the plane. When figuring out what size pet crate, the actual measurements of the pet are the most important.

Generally the airlines require that the animal has room to turn around and has enough height clearance. International flights are very concerned about the height clearance. IATA website offers guidelines and rules. Their link is: IATA – Pet Travelers Corner. The specific airline company that you are flying will have their own requirements as well. We don’t want to forget TSA and their security rules so it is best to cover all your bases and check out all the requirements. We wish there was a standard that all the airlines would follow for cargo pet travel like they did with having oxygen masks on all planes, for example. As well as all the employees of the airlines knew the standards and upheld them. But that is another article.

The best way to know which pet crate of carrier works for your pet is to…..MEASURE YOUR PET! Not all pets are easy to measure. If you are a cat owner you know this too well. We created a video to give you one idea of how to measure your pet.

We also have an article on the comparison of the crates we offer and what is classified as the standard size. Read our article Pet Travel Carrier Crate Guidelines.  Above all give yourself time to do the research. Don’t wait till the last minute. It is also a good idea to get your pet comfortable with the crate you will be using. They will be anxious no matter what until you reach your final destination. but knowing you did all you can do to make them have a comfortable flight will help.

Safe Travels!