Airline Crate Requirements for Pets Flying From Canada

A crate that is the right size can still be turned away. Size is the calculation; acceptance is a separate list of construction rules, and it is the list that catches a crate bought online three days before the flight. Out of Canada there are three documents that matter: the IATA standard every carrier works from, and the two Canadian carriers who each add to it in their own published wording.

Sizing is covered separately in our guide to what size crate a pet needs to fly from Canada. This page is about whether the crate you have will be accepted.

IATA’s Container Requirement 1 is what airline kennel policies are written against. Its construction rules, in its own words:

The 16% figure is the one worth checking with a tape rather than an eye. It is a proportion of the four sides added together, not of one side, and a crate with generous slots on the door and small ones elsewhere can miss it while looking well ventilated.

One sentence in the standard disqualifies a large share of the crates on sale:

Plastic clips are exactly how most plastic kennels arrive. They are fine for a car and a vet visit and they are not fine for a hold, because a crate that separates at the seam is the worst failure available. The fix is a bag of metal nuts and bolts and twenty minutes: one through every hole around the rim, nut on the outside, snug rather than crushed.

Do it when the crate arrives, not the night before. A crate whose holes do not line up is a crate to return, and you want to find that out with time on the calendar.

This is the point where owners buy the wrong thing, because two different rules both mention wire and they point in opposite directions.

The standard requires welded wire mesh at one end of the container, and that end is normally the door. Both Canadian carriers then rule out wire on top. Air Canada: “Hard-sided. The container top must not be covered with mesh. However, ventilation holes are allowed in the lid.” WestJet Cargo puts it in four words: “Kennels with wire roofs are not allowed.”

So the collapsible wire crate that folds flat and the kennel with a mesh top panel are both out, and the moulded plastic kennel with a metal grille door is in. The reason is structural rather than aesthetic: a crate in a hold has other freight around it and a mesh roof is not a roof.

Air Canada also rules out collapsible carriers outright, on the grounds that “no part of your pet may extend outside the carrier”.

For an animal in the baggage compartment, Air Canada publishes its own list on top of the IATA rules.

The zip ties and the wheels are the two that get missed, because neither is in the IATA text and both are checked at the counter. A crate with wheels still on is a crate you are dismantling at the airport.

WestJet Cargo’s kennel list is written for the cargo route and reads like a condition inspection, because that is what it is.

Two of those are about the crate’s history rather than its design. A second-hand kennel with a hairline crack in the shell, or one that still smells of the last animal, can be refused on condition even though it satisfies every dimension. If you are borrowing a crate, inspect the seams and wash it properly.

“Non-consumable” is deliberate. Shredded paper and a puppy pad qualify; straw, wood shavings and anything the animal will eat under stress do not.

WestJet Cargo also puts the fitness of the animal on the shipper: it requires that “the animal is fit to be transported by air”, and it does not accept female dogs and cats in heat or pregnant, or weaned puppies and kittens under eight weeks.

At the counter or the cargo facility the sequence is fairly consistent, and knowing it removes most of the anxiety.

None of that takes long when the crate was prepared weeks earlier. All of it takes a very long time when the first bolt goes in at the airport.

IATA publishes Container Requirement 1 and airlines accept crates that meet it, but the phrase on a product listing is the seller’s claim rather than a certification. Check the crate against the rules above yourself: four-sided ventilation totalling at least 16% of those four sides, a door forming the whole of one end, metal fasteners through the rim, and pins engaging by at least 1.6 cm.

Not for the hold. Air Canada requires a hard-sided container whose top is not covered with mesh, and WestJet Cargo states that kennels with wire roofs are not allowed. Wire belongs at one end as the door, which is what the IATA rule asks for, not on the roof.

The standard says plastic clips must not be the only fasteners holding the two halves together and recommends metal nuts and bolts in every hole. Crates are sold with the clips fitted, so this is a job you do after delivery, and it is the single most common reason a correctly sized crate is questioned.

Absorbent and suitable for the species under the IATA rule, and specifically non-consumable in WestJet Cargo’s wording. A puppy pad under a familiar blanket works. Straw, wood shavings and anything chewable do not.

Yes, if it passes on condition as well as on dimensions. WestJet Cargo asks for a kennel that is clean with no offensive odours and secure with no cracks or damage that risks the structural integrity, so check the shell around the rim and the door hinges, and wash it thoroughly before travel day.