🐕✈️Italy Lets Large Dogs Fly in the Cabin: How It Actually Works

Since 3 August 2026 you can fly a 30 kg dog in an aircraft cabin in Italy, sitting on the floor beside you rather than in the hold. The service is called Large Dog On Board, it is run by ITA Airways, and it is the first time this has been possible on a scheduled commercial flight anywhere in the European Union.

Almost everything else you will read about it is slightly wrong. The 30 kg figure is not the law. The service did not start because one airline decided to be generous. Your dog does not get a seat, and it is not restricted to business class. This guide is built from the regulator's own published guidelines and the airline's own booking pages, with every figure checked against the document it comes from.

What actually changed, and when

The change people attribute to ITA Airways was made by a regulator, more than a year earlier.

Italy's civil aviation authority, ENAC, approved resolution 25/2025 on 12 May 2025 and published guidelines titled ENAC Guidelines on the Carriage of PETs in Cabin above 8 kg — there is an official English translation, which is the document this guide quotes. The transport ministry announced it the same day: ENAC had “given the green light for pets to access the cabin and no longer the hold”.

It was not a single leap. ENAC's own account describes a staged process: the cabin limit went from 8 kg to 10 kg in 2024, then demonstration flights ran during 2025 carrying dogs of 25 kg under controlled conditions, tested against the airline industry's long experience with assistance dogs.

ITA Airways then had to be authorised individually. ENAC approved its request in late July 2026, and Large Dog On Board opened on 3 August 2026. That is the service’s actual name and the one to use when you telephone — ITA sells nothing else by that description.

The distinction matters for a practical reason: the door is open to any airline Italy regulates, and so far exactly one has walked through it.

The 30 kg figure is ITA's choice, not the rule

This is the single most repeated error in the coverage. Headlines say “Italy allows dogs up to 30 kg” as though 30 were written into a regulation. It is not.

ENAC sets a relative ceiling. The transport ministry's wording: the combined weight of animal and carrier “may exceed the limits currently in force, but not exceed the maximum weight provided for an average passenger”. That is a cap defined by reference to a person, not a number of kilograms.

ENAC's own engineering assessment names a different figure again. The guidelines say initial assessments indicate “the practical feasibility of accommodating dogs up to 25 kg in cabin configurations commonly used in commercial air transport”.

So there are three numbers in play and they are not the same thing:

• The regulatory ceiling — the weight of an average passenger, not a fixed figure.
• ENAC's stated feasibility — 25 kg.
• What ITA Airways actually sells — up to 30 kg.

If a second airline launches a comparable service, there is no reason to expect its ceiling to be 30 kg. That number belongs to one carrier's operating plan.

Where your dog sits, and where it does not

You buy two tickets. Your dog does not sit on either of them.

ITA's own page is unambiguous: “During the flight, large dogs cannot travel on the seat and must be placed on a designated mat provided by ITA Airways, positioned on the floor in front of their dedicated seat in the cabin” (ITA Airways). The second ticket buys the floor space and the clearance around it, not a seat your dog occupies.

The mat is not an ITA invention, and this is where a lot of the coverage goes astray. When the transport ministry announced the change in May 2025 it described crates that could be placed above the seats and secured with belts or anchoring systems (its Italian wording: “posizionabili anche sopra i sedili”) — and that early framing is what most articles still repeat. ENAC's updated guidelines describe something different and simpler, listing as the in-flight condition the “use of absorbent mats, harnesses secured to the seatbelt”, with muzzles where necessary. ITA's service follows the current guidelines, not the first press release.

There is one real divergence, and it is narrow. ENAC's criteria call for “leaving the middle seat free and assigning the aisle seat to the owner”. ITA does that for the heavier band. For a dog of 10–15 kg on an A319 or A320 it does the opposite: the owner takes the middle seat and the aisle seat may be sold to another passenger.

Where you sit depends on the aircraft and on how heavy your dog is:

Aircraft	Dog weight	Dog's position	You sit
A220	over 15 to 30 kg	First row, left side, window	Aisle seat
A220	over 10 to 15 kg	Last row, left side, window	Aisle seat
A319 / A320	over 15 to 30 kg	First row, left side, window	Aisle seat, middle stays empty
A319 / A320	over 10 to 15 kg	Last row, left side, window	Middle seat — the aisle seat may be sold to someone else

That last row is worth reading twice. On an A319 or A320 with a dog in the 10–15 kg band, a stranger may be sitting on the aisle beside you.

A maximum of two large dogs per flight: one over 10 and up to 15 kg, one over 15 and up to 30 kg. So the 10–15 kg slot and the 15–30 kg slot are separate and each seats exactly one dog.

Which flights — the actual list

This is not an Italy-wide service and it is not every ITA domestic flight. ITA publishes the eligible departures as a table (Tabella voli ITA Airways, PDF), with flight numbers and times.

Counted from that document on 2 October 2026: 37 flights across 13 airports and 14 city pairs. Several sites report 42 flights; the airline's own table lists 37.

Rome Fiumicino appears on 12 of the 14 pairs, which is the single most useful fact for planning. The airports are Rome Fiumicino, Milan Linate, Bologna, Turin, Genoa, Trieste, Venice, Bari, Brindisi, Lamezia Terme, Reggio Calabria, Palermo and Catania.

Only two pairs avoid Rome entirely: Milan Linate to Palermo and Milan Linate to Catania. Everything else routes through Fiumicino, so a large-dog itinerary across Italy is usually built around a Rome connection — and each leg has to be a Large Dog flight in its own right.

Timings cluster in the middle of the day, roughly 11:00 to 18:30. There is no early-morning or late-evening option. Check the table rather than assuming your usual flight qualifies: on most of these routes only one or two of the day's departures are eligible.

Every other ITA route is unchanged. On international flights the cabin limit is the ordinary one — ITA's own page puts it at “12 kg on domestic flights and 8 kg on all other flights”, carrier and food included. A 30 kg dog cannot fly ITA in the cabin from Rome to New York, or from Rome to Paris.

How to book it, step by step

The booking path is deliberately narrow, and none of it is self-service.

1. Find a Large Dog flight. Start from the flight table, not from the normal booking engine. Note the flight number.
2. Weigh your dog honestly. The band decides where you sit and whether the slot is even free. A vet certificate has to attest the weight, so an optimistic figure will be caught.
3. Telephone the CIAO Contact Center. ITA states the service “can be requested and purchased only through the CIAO Contact Center” and that it is not possible to buy it online, through travel agencies, or by adding it to a standard booking flow (ITA Airways).
4. Call at least four days before departure. ITA asks for as much notice as possible and sets a floor of four days, because the checks take time.
5. Buy two tickets plus the fee. See the next section.
6. Gather the documents before you are asked. One of them has a 20-day clock on it.
7. Check in at the airport. Web check-in is not available for this service — ITA says so explicitly. Allow more time than usual: the documents and the harness are both inspected at the counter.

Confirmation is never automatic. In ITA's words, “confirmation of the service is always subject to prior verification”, and availability depends on the aircraft type, other animals already booked, and the operating conditions of the flight.

What it costs

Two tickets and one flat fee.

ITA's published example prices the service as 2 × the fare you choose, plus a single PETX fee of €95. The second ticket is at the same fare as the first, so the total scales with how expensive your own seat is.

The business-class claim is wrong. Several outlets report that dogs between 15 and 30 kg must travel in business. ITA's own fee table lists five fare families — Economy Light, Economy Comfort, Economy Flex, Business Saver and Business Flex — and the PETX fee is €95 in every one of them, Economy Light included (ITA Airways). You can fly a 30 kg dog on the cheapest economy fare the route sells.

Budget separately for the things the fee does not cover: the mandatory liability insurance, the veterinary certificate, and a crash-tested harness if you do not already own one.

What your dog must have

Six conditions, all from ITA's own requirements list. Your dog must:

• be at least 6 months old;
• be identified by an ISO-compliant microchip;
• have a valid rabies vaccination and up-to-date core vaccinations;
• have had antiparasitic treatment;
• be assessed as suitable in both health and behaviour by a vet;
• be covered by mandatory Pet Liability insurance.

And the one that catches people out: a Crash Tested harness complying with CMVSS 213 and FMVSS 213. Those are the Canadian and United States child-restraint standards — the rules written for child car seats. A small number of dog harnesses are tested to them and most are not, including good ones. ITA confirms the harness is mandatory, is used to secure the dog to the seatbelt for the duration of the flight, and is checked at check-in. Buy it early and keep the documentation.

On board your dog also needs a muzzle, collar and leash, and must stay in its assigned area for the whole trip.

The documents, and the 20-day clock

Five things are presented at request and again at check-in:

• A veterinary certificate issued no more than 20 days before the flight, covering the dog's health, behaviour and weight. This is the item with a deadline: too early and it expires, too late and you miss the four-day booking floor. The practical window is roughly two weeks out.
• The animal's identification document or passport.
• Up-to-date vaccination records.
• The Pet Liability insurance certificate.
• The Pet Admission Form, signed by the owner — ITA publishes it as a downloadable PDF.

ITA is blunt about the consequence: “In the absence of the required documentation, the service cannot be confirmed and boarding will be denied.” There is no discretion at the gate.

What can still go wrong

Even a confirmed booking can fall through, and ITA lists when.

• The flight is not a Large Dog flight. Schedules change; the table is the authority.
• The service is sold out. Two dogs per flight, one per weight band.
• An assistance dog takes priority. If a trained assistance dog (SVAN) is on board, only one Large Dog booking may be allowed; with two assistance dogs on board, the service “may not be available on the requested flight”.
• Operational or security restrictions on the day.
• Documentation incomplete or non-compliant, or the dog does not meet the requirements — refusal at check-in or boarding.

There is also a passenger-comfort route that cuts the other way: anyone with an allergy or sensitivity to dogs can contact ITA to discuss alternatives on a flight carrying one, assessed case by case. ENAC's guidelines ask carriers to provide “mitigation measures such as buffer zones or seat change options for allergic or phobic passengers” and to tell passengers in advance that animals will be in the cabin.

Practical consequence: have a fallback. If the slot is lost on the day, your options are the hold, a later eligible flight, or not flying — and the hold has its own rules and its own risks.

Will other countries and airlines follow?

The honest answer is that the legal route is already open across the European Union, and so far nobody else has used it.

The 8 kg cabin limit most people think of as European law is not in a regulation. It sits in an Acceptable Means of Compliance — AMC2 to CAT.OP.MPA.160 of Regulation (EU) 965/2012 — which, as ENAC's guidelines summarise, permits live animals in an aeroplane cabin “only for PETs up to 8 kg and for guide dogs”.

An AMC is one accepted way to comply, not the only one. ENAC spells out the alternative: those means apply “unless the National Authority authorises alternative methods, which must be communicated to EASA for subsequent verification”, under ARO.GEN.120. In plain terms, any EU member state's aviation authority could authorise this tomorrow without a single line of EU law changing. Italy went first because ENAC chose to use latitude every other authority also has.

ENAC says as much, describing the aim as “making Italy the first Member State to move in this direction”. Its president, Pierluigi Di Palma, framed it as “a cultural change before it is a regulatory one”, tied to the 2022 amendment to Article 9 of the Italian Constitution that made animal protection a constitutional value.

Two things follow, and they pull in opposite directions.

It could spread quickly. No treaty change, no new regulation, no EASA rulemaking cycle — a national authority decision and a notification. The technical groundwork is published, in English, by a regulator that wants to be copied.

But nothing is scheduled. As of October 2026 there is no public announcement from Spain's AESA, France's DGAC or Germany's LBA, and no second airline has announced a comparable service. ENAC is also explicit that carriers “may join voluntarily” and that each must submit an operational plan for ENAC approval — so even inside Italy, this is airline by airline, not a national switch that has been flipped.

If you are waiting for your own airline to offer this, the thing to watch is not airline press releases. It is your national aviation authority.

Myths worth discarding

Five claims in wide circulation that the source documents contradict.

• “Italy allows dogs up to 30 kg in the cabin.” The regulatory cap is the weight of an average passenger; ENAC's stated feasibility is 25 kg; 30 kg is ITA Airways' own operating choice.
• “Dogs over 15 kg must fly business class.” The €95 fee applies across Economy Light, Comfort, Flex and both Business fares.
• “Your dog gets its own seat.” You buy a second ticket; the dog travels on a floor mat and may not be on the seat.
• “You can book it online.” Phone only, through the CIAO Contact Center, and no web check-in afterwards.
• “It works on flights to Italy.” Selected domestic Italian flights only. International ITA flights keep the 8 kg cabin limit.

One more, subtler: “ITA changed the rules.” ENAC did, in May 2025. ITA was the first airline to build a product on top of them, fifteen months later.

Is it worth it?

For the right trip, clearly yes. The alternative for a 30 kg dog on an Italian domestic flight is the hold, and ENAC's own guidelines are unusually frank about what that involves — documented cases of “loss, serious injury, or death”, with recurring causes it lists as acute stress, suffocation from ventilation problems, heat stroke or hypothermia, worsening of existing conditions, dropped carriers and carrier failure. Rare, the regulator says, but each case a serious compromise of welfare. That is the comparison, and it is why this exists.

Against that: the geography is narrow, the booking is a phone call and a document pack, the harness is a real purchase, and you pay for two seats. For a Rome–Catania hop with a Labrador, that is an easy trade. For anything crossing a border, it is not yet an option at all.

If your route is not on the list, the honest answer today is that no scheduled airline in Europe will take a large dog in the cabin, and the realistic choices are the hold, driving, the ferry, or waiting to see which authority moves next.

Flying a dog within Italy or anywhere else? Build your free travel plan and we will lay out the documents, the deadlines and the airline rules for your exact route and your exact dog.