Should your animal make this journey at all?

Last verified: 2026-08-25

The department’s own advice

This is not a disclaimer invented by this site. It is what the authority publishes:

Sick and elderly animals do not cope with long distance travel and climatic stress. We do not recommend importing sick or very old animals. International travel can cause them to de-stabilise and rapidly deteriorate. Even animals with well-managed chronic diseases can arrive in distress and poor health. Animals may be unable to get medication during transport.

Read the last sentence twice. Nothing goes in the crate — including medication — and the journey is long.

What the animal actually goes through

Set out plainly, because the paperwork tends to hide it:

• Manifest cargo, not the cabin. Your animal travels as freight, handled by people you will not meet, on its own air waybill. You will very likely not be on the same aircraft.
• A long flight, plus hours at the cargo terminal before and after.
• Ground temperature extremes. One carrier will not ship at all above 27°C or below −7°C on the ground — because those are the conditions animals are exposed to while waiting.
• Any transhipment stop is an unknown number of hours in a holding facility. The department states it cannot control how long an animal is held there.
• Then quarantine: a minimum of 10 or 30 days at Mickleham, in an individual enclosure, without you.

None of this is a reason not to move a healthy animal. All of it is a reason to be honest about one that is not.

Questions for your veterinarian — not for this site

Bring the real itinerary, the real dates and the real quarantine length:

1. Is this animal fit for a long-haul flight as cargo, in this season?
2. Does its age, weight or condition change that?
3. Does it have any airway, cardiac or anxiety issue that air transport would worsen?
4. What medication will it need, and how is that managed when nothing may travel in the crate and quarantine has its own medication rules?
5. Would you advise waiting, or advise against the journey?

Sedation deserves its own question. It is generally discouraged for animals travelling by air because it affects breathing and thermoregulation at altitude. Ask your veterinarian directly rather than assuming.

Where this site stops

This site will not tell you whether your animal should fly. That is a veterinary judgement about a specific animal, made by someone who can examine it, and no rule engine should make it.

It will also not help route around a welfare-based restriction. If a carrier refuses an animal for welfare reasons, that refusal is information, not an obstacle to engineer past.

And if the honest answer is that the animal should not travel, the options are to delay, to leave it in trusted care, or to accept that this move happens without it. Those are legitimate outcomes, and a plan that depends on nothing going wrong is not.

What this page does not tell you

• Whether your animal is fit to fly.
• Whether sedation is appropriate in any individual case.
• How medication is handled at Mickleham, beyond that the facility has strict guidelines — raise it with the facility before travel.