National cargo pets

Our robust standards for the transportation of animals ensure the comfort and safety of pets at each stage of their journey.

Live animals can be flown to all Air New Zealand destinations. We are the only commercial airline able to move pets.

Travelling with pets

If your pet or live animal is travelling solo, we can fly them as cargo. If your pet or live animal is accompanying you on your national travels, check out travelling with pets. If your pet or live animal is travelling internationally, you'll need to know about our international pet services.

Trusted partners

Every year we are trusted to transport thousands of pets and live animals around New Zealand. We even support the transportation of guide dogs, endangered Kiwis and Tuataras for key national organisations.

Pet transporters

Air New Zealand does not accept animal bookings directly from the public because of the complexity involved in completing the pre-flight documentation, civil aviation, animal welfare compliance and veterinary checks pertaining to domestic pet travel.

Pet transporters must go through a formal registration and approval process before we entrust them to care for your pet's travel arrangements to our standards. We recognize that we are dealing after all with family members - no matter which exterior they are bundled into!

Cost to send pet

Check out how much it will cost to send your pet or live animal and cages.

Book pet travel

All flights can sometimes have restricted space due to aircraft size/passenger numbers/perishable cargo/incompatible cargo or other factors. To ensure carriage of your animal it is necessary that you pre-book your pet travel by contacting a pet transporter. Animal shipments must be prepaid at the time of your booking and booking and administration fees may apply. It is a requirement to provide a government issued photo ID at the time of presenting an animal for shipment on an Air New Zealand flight.

Collecting your pet

You can collect pet from our cargo location at the destination point of your pet's journey. Find your cargo collection point.

Pet Shipments Q & A

Why is the airline not accepting bookings from the Public?

As you can all appreciate there is myriad of administration, compliance and specialist knowledge required for dealing with pet customers and the airline's expertise lie in moving these domestic pets as cargo and this is what we would like to focus on, going forward. This is the primary reason we have made the decision to align our booking process and structure with that of international cargo and only accept bookings from existing account holders.