Moving internationally is pretty stressful by itself, and moving with pets makes it much worse. Why? Because to get any answer regarding pets from an airline (Turkish Airlines in our case) proved to be completely futile. We had 2 cats and 1 dog to fly over, which made it even more difficult. It didn’t seem to be an option to use Lufthansa with pets from Boston to Tbilisi, so Turkish was pretty much the only option actually available.
TL:DR version: if you don’t need to travel with pets – no need to read the rest. If you can avoid it – avoid it. If you do want to move with pets – be prepared with a lot of patience (and money). Moving pets via Turkish Airlines sucks. Badly. Read on if you want all the gory details.
I tried to call Turkish Airlines multiple times (US office) as well as email. And multiple times I got different answers on what exactly do I need to fly the pets with us, how much it costs and how to make a reservation for them.
Three times I called them and was told “let me check cost for pets… yes, we can make a reservation for them now, you need to pay right now for reservation to be valid, otherwise it gets cancelled after 30 minutes… ok, let me add them one by one, which breed, how much they weight… oh, we can’t reserve them in a cabin, they need to be transported in cargo hold… oh, we can’t process a credit card payment for your pets right now, so try again later, sorry, bye”. With each of these calls lasting around 40-50 minutes. Not very helpful, Turkish Airlines, not helpful at all.
I also contacted Boston office of Turkish Airlines Cargo (which is not the same as using luggage compartment, it is a separate service). After 2 emails of asking for more information they stopped responding. At all. I tried a couple more email reminders – nope, no answer. Tried to call them – same. Thanks again, Turkish Airlines, thanks again for nothing.
How did I manage to make a reservation for my pets? I was flying same Turkish Airlines from Boston to Tbilisi a month before my move, and in Istanbul I went to ticket counter (main one, on upper level, take a number), and with the help of ticket clerk and his supervisor (looks like regular ticket people don’t know how to reserve space for pets) I got a reservation done for all 3 pets in a cargo hold, and a long printout proving that I do have it. By the way they told me that info I got over the phone from US call center of Turkish Airlines is wrong, and I don’t need to pay for pets in advance, as I can only do it at the check in counter at the time of check in. Which is actually the case.
You can read a continuation of this story in a post describing our actual move (preview – there is much more pet related “fun” coming up there, so get the popcorn in advance)
Preparing pets for move
There are two things you need to take care of preparing pets for moving internationally: international health certificate for destination country and if you move via air – flight approved pet carriers.
Health certificate: process needs to be started well in advance, as rabies shots need to be done between 21 days and 10 months before travel. Official requirements can be found here. And then you need to time your second visit to get your finalized health certificate that needs to be done within 10 days from your arrival(!) date. Find a vet that is a participant of electronic records system that can get department of agriculture to generate official certificate to them electronically, as you’ll be on a very short timeline. You can find a list of USDA accredited veterinarians by state here.
We went for a 2nd visit 6 calendar/3 business days before our departure (8 days from arrival), and that was cutting it to the wire – we went on Tuesday morning and working with the vet were able to get the actual USDA endorsed copy only on Friday afternoon. If we went on Wednesday, we would not have gotten it in time for departure, and the airline asks for it to review prior to boarding your pets (so you can’t get it after you depart mid-travel). Turkish Airlines looked at ours quite thoroughly (3 different people for 10 minutes) before getting our pets a boarding pass.
From a financial perspective, vet services will vary by state and clinic, ours charged about $300 for initial visit with welness check and rabies shots, and $700 for a second wellness check and finalized international health certificate – this is for 3 pets: 2 cats and 1 dog.
Pet carriers – since there is no way to predict what transportation method the airline will have available for your pets, I suggest to be ready with both types of pet carriers. For travel in cabin you need a soft carrier (pet needs to weight under 8kg), dimensions not to exceed 23 cm height, 30 cm width and 40 cm length for Turkish airlines (read more here). But – it will depend on what kind of pets have been checked in before yours, as they will not take different species on the same flight. So if someone has a dog in a cabin, your cats need to travel in a cargo hold. Which has different carrier requirements – you need a hard shell carrier. Preferably with wheels.
We had both ready, here are the ones we got: cats soft carrier, cats hard carrier, dog hard carrier. Hard carriers have specific requirements, and these are fully compliant (search for IATA airline carrier requirements to find out more) and are of great quality. (I am a part of Amazon affiliates and get a very very small commission if you buy these using my links. Not affiliated with manufacturers.)
Airline will (is supposed to) call you day of your flight and let you know which option they can accommodate – or you can try to call them. You may need both options if you have a layover somewhere (not a direct flight). And hope they do not misplace your carriers to be used on 2nd flight after you use the cabin for the 1st flight (which happened to us).