What are the odds of a pet dying during air cargo transport?
Evidence quality 4.63/5
Eight-dimension review score against the quality rubric . Each dimension scored 1–5.
- D1 Source grounding
- 5/5
- D2 Source authority
- 5/5
- D3 Arithmetic
- 5/5
- D4 Uncertainty
- 4/5
- D5 Scope
- 5/5
- D6 Prose
- 4/5
- D7 Perception honesty
- 4/5
- D8 Caveat completeness
- 5/5
Lifetime probability · lifetime, activity-specific
1 in 20,000
0.005% lifetime chance
range 1 in 33,333 to 1 in 12,500
● your factors — click this risk ▾ to reveal
≈ As likely as
Perceived
Pet owners tend to worry a lot about putting a dog or cat into an aircraft cargo hold, and a handful of high-profile incidents (the 2018 United French bulldog puppy death, the annual "worst airline for pets" headlines) anchor that fear. We have not found a standalone survey isolating "fear of your pet dying in air cargo", so perceived risk is marked as editorial intuition. The rough sense most worried owners carry — that the risk is real but not everyday — is actually close to the numbers. What people usually get wrong is not the average rate, it's the enormous gap between breeds.
Rough estimate: most worried owners guess somewhere between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 10,000 per flight
Source: editorial intuition, not polled
Actual
~1 in 16,000 per pet-flight (US airlines, 2024)
animals transported by US airlines reporting to the DOT, calendar year 2024
Show derivation
Reference subgroup: one pet (dog, cat, or other companion animal) placed on a single US airline flight as reported through the DOT Air Travel Consumer Report animal incident system. Headline figure uses the 2024 annual ATCR numbers: 10 animal deaths across 161,335 animals transported by reporting US carriers, for a per-flight death rate of roughly 1 in 16,000. Averaging the 2021 (7 deaths / ~256,000 transported), 2023 (8 / 124,593), and 2024 (10 / 161,335) years gives approximately 25 deaths across ~542,000 pet-flights, or about 1 in 21,700 — rounded to 1 in 20,000 as the headline point estimate. The scope is declared activity_specific_lifetime because this is per-pet-per-flight risk for a specific activity, not a general-population lifetime risk, and it is not directly comparable to the US-adult lifetime figures on most other Likelier pages. Incident reports cover death, serious injury, and loss; the 1 in 20,000 figure counts deaths only, not injuries or lost animals, which roughly double the total incident rate to around 1 in 12,000 per pet-flight.
Caveats: The per-flight death rate is a small-sample statistic that moves with a handful …
The per-flight death rate is a small-sample statistic that moves with a handful of events per year, and it only covers US airlines that are required to file DOT Part 235 animal incident reports. It does not include foreign carriers, cargo-only airlines, ground-transport pet shipping, or shipments that were declined at check-in for heat embargo or health reasons (which remove higher-risk animals from the denominator before they ever fly). The dataset also does not separate "died during the flight" from "euthanized after arrival due to a flight-related condition" from "died of a pre-existing condition that happened to surface during transit", which are treated as a single reporting category. Finally, the headline rate has drifted downward over the past decade because several US airlines stopped accepting many brachycephalic breeds as cargo, mechanically removing most of the historical fatalities from the system; the residual all-breed rate describes the risk profile of what the airlines still transport, not what they used to transport. Readers comparing this figure to pre-2018 reporting should expect the older numbers to be materially higher.
Regional breakdown
The headline figure averages across very different populations. Here’s how the probability varies by geography or context:
| Region / context | Lifetime probability | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| US airlines, all pets, 2024 ATCR | 1 in 16,129 |
10 deaths / 161,335 animals transported = 1 in 16,134 per pet-flight. Deaths only; excludes injuries and lost animals. |
| US airlines, all pets, 2023 ATCR | 1 in 15,625 |
8 deaths / 124,593 animals transported = 1 in 15,574 per pet-flight. |
| US airlines, all pets, 2021 | 1 in 37,037 |
7 deaths / ~256,000 animals transported = 1 in ~36,600 per pet-flight. 2021 had unusually high volumes relative to deaths. |
| Brachycephalic dog breeds (pugs, bulldogs, boxers) in cargo | 1 in 2,000 |
AVMA/DOT 2005-2010 data: about half of 122 dog deaths were short-faced breeds at a small fraction of pet transport volume, implying a per-flight rate roughly an order of magnitude above the all-breed average — ~1 in 2,000 per flight is the working estimate. Several US airlines banned these breeds from cargo as a result. |
| Cabin-transport pets (small dogs, cats under carrier-weight limit) | 1 in 200,000 |
DOT incident reports are dominated by cargo hold events. Cabin carriage incidents are rare enough in the monthly filings to be roughly a tenth of the all-pet rate, putting the per-flight death rate for a cabin pet near 1 in 200,000. Small sample; treat as order-of-magnitude. |
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The headline number is roughly 1 in 20,000 per pet-flight on US airlines, averaged across recent years of DOT Air Travel Consumer Report filings. In 2024, reporting carriers logged 10 animal deaths across 161,335 animals transported — about 1 in 16,000. In 2023 it was 8 deaths across 124,593 — about 1 in 15,600. In 2021, 7 deaths across roughly 256,000 — about 1 in 36,600. The per-flight fatality rate is in the same order-of-magnitude ballpark as the lifetime odds a US adult dies in a plane crash, and comfortably lower than most owners guess when asked cold. For a healthy, non-brachycephalic pet on a direct domestic flight in moderate weather, air cargo transport is, statistically, closer to a routine procedure than to a dangerous one.
What makes this fear unusual on Likelier is that the headline rate is not the interesting number. The distribution is extraordinarily skewed by breed. Over a five-year DOT review window summarised by the AVMA, roughly half of all 122 recorded dog deaths on airline flights were brachycephalic breeds — pugs, English bulldogs, Boston terriers, boxers, Pekingese — despite those breeds making up a much smaller share of transported pets. English bulldogs alone accounted for 25 of 122 deaths, and pugs for 11. Short-faced dogs and cats have narrow nostrils and elongated soft palates that compromise breathing under the heat, noise, and stress of a cargo hold; several US airlines, including Delta, United, and American, subsequently stopped accepting many of these breeds as checked cargo on the basis of the same data. Most of the “airlines kill pets” headline events of the last fifteen years involved a brachycephalic animal. The all-breed average hides that.
Where the headline number does not apply: it does not describe a brachycephalic dog (probably closer to 1 in 2,000 per flight historically, which is why they are now largely banned from cargo), a senior pet with cardiac or respiratory disease (roughly 3x the average), or a pet exposed to summer heat or winter cold on the tarmac between connecting flights. It also does not describe a small dog or cat riding in the cabin under the seat, where DOT-reportable incidents are rare enough to imply a per-flight fatality rate around an order of magnitude below the all-pet figure. Bulfon et al.’s 2023 peer-reviewed owner-survey study of 663 air-traveled dogs found that most recovered quickly from flying, with only about 0.6 percent still showing elevated stress 30 days out, but the two deaths in the sample were both in the cargo hold. The risk-reduction levers — cabin over cargo, direct over connecting, cool weather over summer, a healthy non-flat-faced adult over an elderly bulldog — are almost entirely within the owner’s control, which is rare for a fear whose baseline rate is already small.
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
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[1] US Department of Transportation, Office of Aviation Consumer Protection — Air Travel Consumer Report: December 2024, Full Year 2024 Numbers
Air Travel Consumer Report: December 2024, Full Year 2024 Numbers- Statistic
10 animal deaths, 3 injuries, 0 lost, across 161,335 animals transported by US airlines in calendar year 2024 (rate of 0.81 incidents per 10,000 animals)- Excerpt
“"For calendar year 2024, carriers reported 10 animal deaths, injuries to three other animals, and zero lost animals, for a total of 13 incidents, up from nine incident reports filed in calendar year 2023. For calendar year 2024, 161,335 animals were transported by airlines, for a rate of 0.81 incidents per 10,000 animals transported." ”
- Source data from
- 2025-03-01
- Accessed
- 2026-04-11 · archived copy
- Calculation
- Airlines that transport animals in the US are required by 14 CFR Part 235 to report every death, injury, or loss of an animal during air transport to the DOT, which publishes the tallies in the monthly Air Travel Consumer Report. Dividing the 10 reported deaths by the 161,335 animals transported in 2024 gives a per-flight death rate of 1 / 16,134 ≈ 0.0000620, or roughly 6 per 100,000 pet-flights. Including injuries and lost animals as "incidents" raises the combined figure to 13 / 161,335 = 1 in 12,410 per pet-flight. The DOT's headline "0.81 incidents per 10,000" phrasing matches this 1-in-12,000 combined-incident rate, not the death-only rate. The three-year average across 2021 (7/~256,000), 2023 (8/124,593) and 2024 (10/161,335) gives 25 deaths across roughly 542,000 pet-flights, or 1 in 21,700 — the basis for the 1 in 20,000 headline.
- Independence
- DOT is the upstream source for US airline pet incident data; essentially every other secondary report (AVMA, Time, PetFlight, AWI) depends on the same Part 235 filings, so these are not independent measurements, just different presentations of the same regulatory dataset.
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[2] American Veterinary Medical Association — Air travel and short-nosed dogs FAQ
Air travel and short-nosed dogs FAQ- Statistic
Approximately half of 122 dog deaths associated with airline flights over a 5-year period involved short-faced brachycephalic breeds; 25 were English bulldogs and 11 were pugs- Excerpt
“"Over the last 5 years, approximately one-half of the 122 dog deaths associated with airline flights involved these short-faced breeds." ... "25 of the 122 dogs that died over the 5-year period were English bulldogs, followed by 11 pugs." ... "Short-nosed breeds of dogs—such as pugs, Boston Terriers, boxers, some mastiffs, Pekingese, Lhasa Apsos, Shih tzus and bulldogs—are more likely to die on airplanes." ”
- Source data from
- 2011-06-01
- Accessed
- 2026-04-11 · archived copy
- Calculation
- AVMA summarised a DOT-data review showing that brachycephalic (short-snouted) breeds accounted for roughly half of all dog deaths on US airline flights in 2005-2010, despite being a much smaller fraction of the total pet population transported. This is the main evidence for the ~10x breed multiplier used in the personal factor table: if English bulldogs alone contributed 25/122 ≈ 20 percent of all dog deaths at a far lower share of total transported pets, their per-flight death rate is roughly an order of magnitude above the all-breed average. Several US airlines (Delta, United, American) subsequently banned many brachycephalic breeds as checked cargo based partly on this data.
- Independence
- AVMA's summary is built on the same underlying DOT Part 235 animal incident reports as the first source, so the two citations share an upstream dataset. They are used here as complementary rather than independent: the DOT report is the authoritative headline rate, and AVMA provides the breed-level breakdown that the raw DOT tables do not publish in a digested form.
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[3] Animals (MDPI) / US National Library of Medicine PMC — How Well Do Dogs Cope with Air Travel? An Owner-Reported Survey Study
How Well Do Dogs Cope with Air Travel? An Owner-Reported Survey Study- Statistic
In a 663-dog owner-reported survey, 2 dogs died during the study period, both traveling in cargo holds; 9.4 percent of dogs were much more or extremely more stressed 48 hours post-flight, declining to 0.6 percent at 30 days- Excerpt
“"Most dogs cope with and recover well from air travel but that there is a group of individuals who suffer physical, mental, and emotional ill health consequences during or after air travel, including death." ... "Only 8.3% of dogs in this survey were brachycephalic breed dogs." ”
- Source data from
- 2023-09-22
- Accessed
- 2026-04-11 · archived copy
- Calculation
- The Bulfon et al. owner-reported survey is the most recent peer-reviewed study of how companion dogs tolerate air travel. Used here as a qualitative cross-check on two points: (a) the headline rate of fatal or serious adverse events is small but nonzero even in a self-selected sample of travel-willing owners, and (b) the distribution of stress responses is highly skewed — most dogs recover quickly, a small minority suffer substantial post-flight effects, and fatalities concentrate in cargo hold placement. The study is not powered to compute a per-flight mortality rate directly (n=663 dogs, 2 deaths is not a stable denominator), but it corroborates the DOT pattern that deaths, when they occur, are overwhelmingly in cargo hold rather than cabin travel.
- Independence
- Bulfon et al. collected an independent owner-reported sample rather than DOT Part 235 filings, so this source is methodologically independent of the first two. It measures a partially overlapping population (pet dogs on commercial flights, mostly European and Australasian carriers) but uses a separate data-collection pipeline.