Italian Airlines: Where Pet Friendly Policies Exist Only in Their Press Releases

In September 2025, Italy told the world it had cracked pet air travel. ITA Airways, the national flag carrier, stood up at the ICAO 42nd Assembly in Montreal alongside the Italian Ministry of Transport and ENAC, the national civil aviation authority, and presented “Pet Care on Board.” Medium and large dogs would fly in the passenger cabin. no crates. no cargo hold.

Italy would lead Europe.

Two dogs, Moka, a 12-year-old Labrador, and Honey, an 11-year-old mixed breed, flew from Milan Linate to Rome Fiumicino on 23 September 2025 without carriers. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini was on board. ENAC President Pierluigi Di Palma was on board. ITA Airways Chairman Sandro Pappalardo was on board. The cameras were rolling.

Seven months later, there is still no way to book it.

What You Find When You Try to Book

Go to ITA Airways’ official pet travel page today. The weight limits are 10 kilograms for domestic flights and 8 kilograms for international. A soft carrier under the seat. These are the same rules that existed before any announcement was made. There is no “Large Pet Friendly” option anywhere on the website. No booking path. No route list. No pricing structure. No seat selection for a 30 kilogram dog. No mention of the programme at all.

Search. Click. Call. Repeat. The answer does not change.

Multiple consumer reports from March and April 2026 confirm that ITA’s own call centre agents explicitly state that the “Large Pet Friendly” ticket “does not exist” or is “not yet available in the system.” The people paid to sell it cannot find it.

Some online sources claim the service requires 48-hour advance booking. Others say eligible flights are marked with a green paw icon next to the flight number. None of this can be verified on any official channel. It exists only in the echo chamber of recycled press releases and AI-generated travel guides pulling from those same announcements without checking whether anything behind them is real.

In February 2026, ITA Airways issued a corporate press release announcing “Large Pet Friendly” tickets for domestic flights. Dogs up to 30 kilograms. Adjacent seat purchase. On sale for summer 2026. The international pet travel community celebrated. Blogs wrote it up. Pet owners across Italy started planning their summer around the promise. This is not a delay. It is a failure to launch.

Aeroitalia: The Other Italian Airline

ITA Airways is the name in the headlines, but the more troubling story belongs to Aeroitalia. On 27 February 2026, Aeroitalia flew two dogs, Ross and Evan, each weighing approximately 30 kilograms, on a Rome Palermo to Fiumicino service without carriers in the cabin. Deputy Prime Minister Salvini attended. ENAC President Di Palma attended. The same officials at the same kind of event, five months after the ITA demonstration, lending the same political weight to the same kind of promise.

In February, Aeroitalia management stated that tickets would be “on sale shortly.” By April, at the Quattrozampeinfiera pet fair in Naples, Cabin Pet Manager Rosalba Calabrese described the programme as being in a “test phase and new procedures” stage. In two months, “on sale shortly” became “test phase.”

That is not a delay. That is a walkback.

Visit Aeroitalia’s website today. Standard carrier requirements for small pets. No 30 kilogram option. No booking path. No published routes.

But the booking page is not the reason Aeroitalia deserves scrutiny.

The reason is what sits behind the airline itself.

Who Runs Aeroitalia

Aeroitalia’s CEO is Gaetano Intrieri. In 2018, Intrieri served as a government consultant for the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport. He resigned after it was revealed that he had been convicted of embezzling nearly 500,000 euros from a previous airline. He has engaged in aggressive public confrontations with competitors, including rants against Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, and has cancelled routes based on perceived lack of community appreciation.

There is something wrong with this man running an airline, fraud follows him.

This is not a stable operator promising a complex new product, this is the man telling Italian dog owners that their 30 kilogram dog will fly safely.

Who Owns Aeroitalia

The airline’s ownership is currently the subject of litigation in the UK High Court. JDK Holdings Corporation has filed a claim against Aeroitalia Chairman Marc Bourgade, seeking to establish rights to 95 percent of the airline’s shares. JDK alleges that Bourgade subverted an agreed-upon sale of the airline. A request for an immediate seizure order related to Bourgade’s shares in Italy has been filed.

An airline potentially changing hands in court is promising a service that requires operational precision, capital investment, and regulatory trust. The question of whether Aeroitalia has the corporate stability to deliver is not rhetorical.

What Passengers Actually Experience

Consumer reviews tell their own story. Aeroitalia’s Trustpilot profile is overwhelmingly negative, with complaints centring on flight cancellations, refusal of refunds, and a near-total absence of responsive customer service. The regional government of Sardinia has formally highlighted “critical issues” in the airline’s performance on territorial continuity routes serving Sardinia and Sicily, the very routes it depends on for revenue.

Aeroitalia’s business model appears heavily reliant on public subsidies and airport contributions. CEO Intrieri has publicly defended this dependency as a “necessary recognition of brought GDP.” When an airline depends on political goodwill for its commercial survival, the incentive to stage politically useful photo opportunities, such as a pet-friendly demonstration flight attended by the Deputy Prime Minister, becomes self-evident.

This is the airline that says your dog will fly in the cabin this summer.

The Regulation Is Real. The Product Is Not.

What makes this situation more than a simple case of overpromising is that the Italian regulatory framework behind these announcements is genuine.

ENAC adopted Delibera 25/2025 in May 2025, removing the fixed 8 to 10 kilogram ceiling for cabin pets and allowing airlines to propose procedures for heavier animals. In November 2025, an updated ENAC resolution raised the maximum reference weight to 30 kilograms per animal, with a cap of six pets per flight on domestic routes. The Ministry of Transport formally approved this on 25 November 2025.

Italy grounded these changes in something deeper than commercial interest.

The 2022 reform of Article 9 of the Italian Constitution mandates the protection of animals. Law 82/2025, which received final Senate approval on 29 May 2025, transformed the legal status of animals from “objects of human sentiment” to “sentient beings” with inherent rights to protection. ENAC frames “Pet Care on Board” as fulfilling a constitutional duty, positioning Italy as the first country in the world to build a regulatory framework for large pets in the commercial passenger cabin.

The technical guidelines are detailed. Dogs up to 30 kilograms travel using a harness and seat belt system or a certified crate secured to an adjacent seat. First or last row, window side. Muzzle required. Veterinary certificate within seven days. Absorbent mats. HEPA filtration. No emergency exit rows. A maximum of six animals per flight. On paper, it is serious, detailed, and world-leading.

In practice, none of it has reached a booking page.

The Political Escalation

Look at the numbers and the timeline, and a pattern becomes visible.

The September 2025 demonstration flight tested dogs up to 25 kilograms. By November, the ENAC resolution had raised the ceiling to 30 kilograms. That escalation was not driven by operational testing or technical evidence. It was championed directly by Deputy Prime Minister Salvini, who described the increase as a continuation of a “battle for civilization.”

A 25 kilogram limit was already unprecedented in European aviation. Pushing it to 30 kilograms within two months, without additional demonstration flights at the higher weight, without published evidence of seat-load testing at 30 kilograms, and without any airline having completed even a single commercial booking at 25 kilograms. The timeline points to political acceleration ahead of operational readiness.

The staging across both airlines follows the same choreography:

ITA Airways demo flight, September 2025: Salvini, Di Palma, Pappalardo. ICAO Assembly presentation the following day with Deputy Minister Rixi.

Aeroitalia demo flight, February 2026: Salvini, Di Palma, ADR President Nunziata. National media coverage.

ITA Airways press release, February 2026: “Large Pet Friendly” announced for summer 2026 sale. Timed precisely to the summer booking window.

Quattrozampeinfiera, April 2026: Aeroitalia presents alongside ENAC guidelines. “On sale shortly” has become “test phase.”

The same Deputy Prime Minister at every milestone. The same ENAC President at every milestone. The same pattern, maximum media impact, zero operational accountability. No verifiable launch date, no published route network.

No booking system. No pricing. Nothing.

And notably, no public register from ENAC confirming which airlines have actually submitted operational plans under Delibera 25/2025 and received formal approval. The framework exists, whether anyone has been formally authorised to use it commercially remains unverifiable.

Europe Is Watching

Italy is not operating in a vacuum, but it is operating alone.

La Compagnie, the French business-class carrier that was previously one of the most generous on pet limits, cut its cabin allowance from 15 kilograms to 8 kilograms in October 2024. airBaltic briefly raised its limit to 12 kilograms in 2023 before reversing the decision. Lufthansa has expressly stated it has no plans to adopt the Italian 30 kilogram model. The standard across European commercial aviation remains 8 kilograms with a carrier under the seat.

No other EU member state has attempted regulation comparable to ENAC’s Delibera 25/2025. No other European airline has announced a 30 kilogram cabin product. Italy’s framework is genuinely first-of-its-kind within the EU.

Which makes the failure to operationalise it more damaging, not less. If Italy fails publicly, the model does not spread. It dies. Every European regulator watching this experiment will see press conferences without products and conclude that large-pet cabin travel is a theoretical exercise, not a commercial reality.

The 8 kilogram ceiling stays for everyone.

The Consumer Cost

This is not an abstract policy debate. Italian families planned summer 2026 holidays around the promise that their Labrador could fly in the cabin. People who had been driving 12 hours across the country because their dog exceeded the weight limit saw these headlines and thought; finally.

Some will have booked flights expecting the service to exist.

Both airlines issued their most definitive launch statements in February 2026, precisely at the start of the summer booking window. The timing was not accidental. These announcements were designed to capture the attention of pet owners at the exact moment they were making travel decisions. People who might otherwise have planned a road trip instead looked at these headlines and thought they had a new option.

The questions are already appearing online, on Italian pet travel forums, on social media. People have read that Italy allows 30 kilogram dogs in the cabin, they have seen the photographs of Moka and Honey on the Linate to Fiumicino flight.

But they cannot find any way to book it because it is a lie.

Italian pet travel specialists have been more careful than the international media. Vacanzaconilcane published a detailed explainer stressing that ENAC’s rules allow airlines to offer the service but that no airline has yet made it available. LND Animal Protection clarified that ITA’s ordinary policy remains limited to 10 kilograms. One Italian YouTube explainer stated it plainly: no airline is ready yet.

The specialist community sees the gap. The general public, reading headlines that describe a revolution in Italian pet travel, does not. This has to stop.

What Needs to Happen

Airlines must publish concrete timelines. Not “summer 2026.” Not “on sale shortly.” Not “test phase.” Specific dates. Specific routes. Specific pricing. If the product is not ready, say so publicly. Do not let dog owners plan holidays around a service that does not exist, it actively undermines trust in a global market.

The Ministry of Transport, decide whether “Pet Care on Board” is a policy priority or a photo opportunity. If it is a priority, set a deadline for airlines to submit their operational plans and publish a register of who has been approved.

Transparency is not optional when consumer trust is at stake.

The executives involved must resign.

ENAC must consider whether their regulatory framework is being used as intended or co-opted for political staging. A constitutional mandate to protect animal welfare is not fulfilled by demonstration flights attended by politicians. It is fulfilled by bookable services that real pet owners can actually use.

The demand for inclusive pet air travel is real.

The 465 billion euro global pet economy is real. The frustration of dog owners who have been promised change and received nothing is real.

Italy has the regulation, they had the political will, they had the cameras rolling.

What Italy does not have, as of April 2026, is a single bookable flight where a 30 kilogram dog can sit next to its owner in the cabin...

A policy built. A promise made. A service that does not exist.

Research for this investigation was conducted by members of the Roch Society editorial team. Sources include ENAC regulatory documents and Delibera 25/2025, ICAO 42nd Assembly records and working paper A42-WP/509, ITA Airways corporate press releases and official pet travel conditions, Aeroitalia official communications, Italian Ministry of Transport notices, UK High Court filings (JDK Holdings Corporation v Bourgade), and specialist pet travel media including Vacanzaconilcane, Dogwelcome, and LND Animal Protection.

Editors Note: This is a live investigation in progress and we are still gathering evidence. If you have been affected by this, or if you wish to submit information anonymously, please email [email protected].