I have a friend that wants to put her very small dog in a softsided kennel under the seat in front of her during her flight from ORD/MKE-SFO. When she inquired about cost from the airline, they told her $80 each way. The size is smaller than the carryon luggage allowance. You can bring a lap child for free why can't you bring a 4 pound dog for free? I remeber my friend told me he almost never pays for his little dog in a small carry on kennel. He knows he is supposed to pay but doesn't mention the dog and only got caught once.

Does the dog need a boarding pass? Will security give her a hardtime if she has a dog with no documentation on airline paper stock saying she has a dog? We figure the worst that could happen is she'll have to pay. Almost cheaper to buy another seat than pay the $80 each way.

Airlines only allow a certain number of in-cabin pets per flight. Worst case scenario is the gate agent notices the pet, your friend offers to pay, but the flight already is at its limit.

The price varies quite a bit by airline. Shop around.

It does seem expensive. I've never traveled with a pet, but I wondered the same thing you mentioned -- will security care if you have a "ticket" for your pet when you go thru...

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by scklumb:
I have a friend that wants to put her very small dog in a softsided kennel under the seat in front of her during her flight from ORD/MKE-SFO. When she inquired about cost from the airline, they told her $80 each way. The size is smaller than the carryon luggage allowance. You can bring a lap child for free why can't you bring a 4 pound dog for free? I remeber my friend told me he almost never pays for his little dog in a small carry on kennel. He knows he is supposed to pay but doesn't mention the dog and only got caught once.

Does the dog need a boarding pass? Will security give her a hardtime if she has a dog with no documentation on airline paper stock saying she has a dog? We figure the worst that could happen is she'll have to pay. Almost cheaper to buy another seat than pay the $80 each way.</font>

I have done this quite a lot - travelled with my small dog under the seat in front. I t always p***es me off that I have to pay $80 each way (on AA) for the dog - sometimes more expensive than my ticket. And others are bringing on SOOOO much luggage. And others have babies which don't cost anything but are louder, and higher maintenance. My dog would be difficult to hide so I have always booked him in advance. Sometimes they forget to charge me or just waive it.

I wouldn't turn up with the dog without having it pre-booked - you may get stuck.

In reality most of the time it is actually cheaper to fly with them than to kennel them or get a sitter.

One warning (which may apply or not) - AA won't allow dogs in the J/F cabin on wide body a/c (767, 777) - so on one occasion I had to rebook JFK-LAX to EWR-LAX on a 757 instead.