If you have ever tried to work out whether your dog can fly with you, you know the drill. One airline buries its pet policy five clicks deep. Another lists a cabin weight limit but not whether it includes the carrier. A third just says “contact us.” Before long you have ten browser tabs open, three of them contradicting each other, and you still are not sure what it costs.
I know that rabbit hole well. Planning trips with Nala, my Pomsky, is what sent me down it in the first place, and I figured if I was losing hours untangling airline pet policies, so was every other dog owner. So today I am launching Dog Flight Guide: every airline’s dog policy in one place, checked and scored. It is the tool I wished existed.
Flying with a dog is stressful enough without the research being the hard part. The information exists, but it is scattered across dozens of airline sites, written in fine print, and often out of date. Most aggregators lump dogs in with cats, birds and reptiles, so you wade through rules that do not apply to you. What you actually want is simple: can my dog come, in the cabin or the hold, up to what weight, at what cost, and what do I need to bring.
What you can do today
That is exactly what Dog Flight Guide answers. Right now you can:
- Compare dozens of airlines side by side, from Lufthansa and Delta to Ryanair and Emirates.
- See at a glance whether dogs fly in the cabin, in the hold, or not at all.
- Check the cabin weight limit (carrier included), the fees, and any breed restrictions.
- Read a plain-English summary of each airline’s rules, with a link to the official policy and the date we last verified it.
- Sort and filter by region, policy, or Dog-Friendly Score.
Every airline gets a Dog-Friendly Score from 0 to 100, so you can tell a genuinely dog-friendly carrier from one that technically allows dogs but makes it painful. How we reach that number is laid out in full on the scoring page. Nothing is hidden.
No airline pays for a score
Here is the part I care about most. The scores are independent. No airline pays for a better rating, and none ever will. If a carrier treats dogs poorly, we say so, even when we would rather not. Dog owners deserve an honest read, not a ranking shaped by whoever writes the biggest cheque.
The site always shows you where the information came from and when we checked it. Policies change often, so verify with the airline before you book. That is not a disclaimer to cover ourselves; it is just honest.
This is just the start
Today is day one. The database will keep growing, the policies will stay current, and there is more on the way: guides for first-time flyers, help choosing a travel carrier, and country entry requirements, the questions dog owners ask most.
If an airline is missing or a policy looks wrong, tell me. This is built for dog owners, and it gets better with their help.
Ready to plan your trip? Browse the airlines and find the right one for you and your dog. And if you want the story behind the project, read more about it here.