Many of us would gladly give up our luggage and leg room for a cheaper airplane ticket. But there is one detail where no passenger is prepared to give up: the comfort of your pet.
Australia insurance company Budget Direct checked out the pet-friendly policies of the top 50 airlines in the world (as voted for by customers).
It rated them out of ten in categories such as cost-per-pet, cabin allowance, and openness to welcoming ‘unusual’ animals. Each airline ended up with a score out of 100, and Budget Direct used these scores to rank the top 50 pet-friendly airlines on Earth.
Check out the list:
Best airlines for pet travel
The Netherlands is one of the most pet friendly countries around the world with pet parents even taking their puppies along with them on their beloved bicycles so it’s not surprise that Dutch pets like to travel by air, too. Netherlands-based KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is paws-down the winner for pets on planes, with a score of 81.8/100. That’s nearly five points ahead of second-ranked Air France.
A look at the chart shows that KLM scores strongly across all categories, while third-placed Air Canada scores high for their low travel fees but falls behind with its limit of 45kg for pets who fly in the hold.
The top five were rounded out by Turkish Airlines and Lufthansa.
The top and bottom-ranked airlines for pets on planes
The airlines Budget Direct reviewed were already highly rated for humans, so the high pet-friendliness scores of airlines like KLM and Lufthansa prove they have cross-species appeal! However, the airlines at the bottom of the pet-friendly chart seem to think much more highly of humans than of their four-legged friends. Australia’s Jetstar Airways is in bottom place with a big fluffy zero because the airline “is not equipped to transport your pets” (although they recommended ‘pet travel experts’ Jetpets to sort it out for you).
Out of the top 100 here are the top five and bottom five.
Where are the most pet-friendly airlines based?
The best airlines for pet travel are based across just three continents. Europe is a hub for jet-setting pets, with five out of the top ten pet-friendly airlines, plus Turkish Airlines and Russian Aeroflot in countries that straddle European-Asian borders. South Korea has two airlines in the top ten, and Air Canada is the only representative of North America.
For the full list see below:
To create the charts, Budget Direct conducted a detailed review of the pet policies of the top 50 airlines in the world, as ranked by the annual Skytraxx airline rankings in 2019. The information on the pet policies were sourced from the airlines’ official websites, and Budget Direct used websites such as BringFido and PetTravel to find additional information. It then scored and ranked each airline based on their policies.
Research was conducted between March 20th and April 1st, 2020. The full research behind this project can be found at bit.ly/MostPetFriendlyAirlines.