White Glove · Dubai, UAE
White Glove Pet Relocation
Our highest tier, from AED 15,000. Everything in Managed, plus the four things that only exist here: pre-flight boarding with a comfort stop, a flight nanny on the same aircraft as your pet, live confirmation at every checkpoint, and a settling-in visit at the destination.
And where it is genuinely the right answer, private charter — the only arrangement in which your pet flies in the cabin beside you out of Dubai, with no crate, no breed restriction, no size limit and no summer heat embargo. Chartered at cost, quoted separately, and only when it earns its place.
The difference
What white glove adds to Managed
Managed already covers the whole regulatory and logistical job — permits, crate, vet scheduling, clearance both ends, door-to-door transport, a named coordinator. If you want the move handled without thinking about it, Managed does that. White Glove exists for the cases where somebody needs to be physically present with the animal.
| Included | Managed from AED 8,000 |
White Glove from AED 15,000 |
|---|---|---|
| MOCCAE permits, crate, cargo booking, certification | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customs clearance both ends | ✓ | ✓ |
| Veterinary appointment scheduling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Door-to-door collection and delivery | ✓ | ✓ |
| Named coordinator for the whole move | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pre-flight boarding and comfort stop | — | ✓ |
| Flight nanny on the same aircraft | — | ✓ |
| Live confirmation at every checkpoint | — | ✓ |
| Destination settling-in visit | — | ✓ |
| Private charter arrangement | — | On request, at cost |
Four lines, and they all describe the same thing: presence. The rest of the tier is identical work done to the identical standard. If nobody needs to be standing next to your pet, Managed is the honest recommendation and we will say so.
Private charter
The only way your pet flies in the cabin
Out of Dubai, a dog or cat cannot travel in the passenger cabin on Emirates at any price — the airline carries no pets in the cabin at all, and cats and dogs move through Emirates SkyCargo as manifested cargo. On a private charter, none of that applies. Your pet sits in the cabin beside you. No crate. No breed restriction. No size limit.
Dubai has purpose-built infrastructure for this now: Fly JetPets began operating from Al Maktoum International with Jetex in October 2024, and Arabian Business puts the pet travel sector at USD 5.3bn. This is no longer a favour negotiated with a broker — it is a service with a terminal.
Indicative charter costs
| Arrangement | Indicative | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| Shared charter, per seat | USD 8,000–13,000 | One or two pets, flexible dates, a popular sector |
| Full aircraft charter | USD 10,000–15,000 per hour | Multiple pets, fixed date, complete privacy |
| London–Dubai, whole aircraft | From approx USD 10,000 | The most-run premium sector in either direction |
Indicative ranges, not quotes. Charter pricing moves with aircraft type, routing, season and positioning, and is billed to you at cost — we do not mark it up. There is no per-pet charge on a charter; the aircraft price covers the aircraft.
What charter actually removes
This is the part worth understanding, because it is not about comfort. Commercial carriers will not accept live animals when temperatures along the itinerary exceed roughly 29.5°C, and the ceiling drops to around 24–27°C for snub-nosed breeds, which several carriers replace with an outright summer ban. Dubai averages 40°C in June, 41°C in July and August, and 39°C in September.
So for a Bulldog, a Persian or a Pug with a July departure, the commercial answer is often that there is no answer. A charter is not the luxurious option in that situation. It is the only one.
The cabin question without a jet
Before anybody charters an aircraft, one honest check: if your pet is small and your destination is on the right list, there is a far cheaper way to have it in the cabin with you.
Etihad carries small cats and dogs in the passenger cabin on flights to and from Abu Dhabi. The limits are real and tight — combined pet and carrier weight up to 8 kg, a soft-sided carrier of roughly 40 × 40 × 22 cm, and no hard crates in the cabin. The request goes in online at least seven days before departure, with vaccination records, microchip details and the UAE import permit uploaded. A number of destinations are excluded outright, the UK, the United States, Australia and Hong Kong among them.
Read the shape of that and you can see who it fits: a cat or a small dog, flying from Abu Dhabi rather than Dubai, to Europe or Asia rather than to the anglophone destinations that need the long protocols anyway. If that is you, we will tell you so — and we will still handle the permits, the certification and the paperwork, at the Managed tier, for a fraction of a charter.
If it is not you — a 30 kg dog, a flat-faced breed, a July departure, a UK or Australian destination — then cargo or charter are the two real options, and the section above is the comparison that matters. See dog relocation Dubai and cat relocation Dubai for how each animal is handled, and pet shipping Dubai for the cargo process end to end.
Accompaniment
A person with your pet, the whole way
Included at this tier. A Foufoufly nanny books a seat on the same aircraft as your pet, handles the lodgement at the cargo terminal in Dubai, travels on that flight, and collects the animal personally at the other end before delivering it to your door.
One clarification, because the term is used loosely in this industry. Out of Dubai a nanny cannot hold your pet in the cabin — Emirates permits no cabin pets, so the animal is in the hold and the nanny is upstairs on the same aircraft. What that buys you is not physical contact in flight. It is a professional at both ends of the journey, on the ground, who can act: chase a delayed offload, resolve a paperwork query with the veterinary officer, or make a decision about an onward connection without waiting for anybody to wake up in another time zone.
On routes and carriers where in-cabin carriage is permitted, the nanny holds your pet throughout. We will tell you which applies to your route before you book, not after.
More on how accompaniment works, and when it is worth it, on our pet nanny service page.
What is included at this tier
- Pre-flight boarding and a comfort stop — your pet stays with us rather than in an empty house on moving day, with a walk, a feed and water before lodgement.
- Flight nanny accompaniment — on the same aircraft, both ends handled in person.
- Live confirmation at every checkpoint — collection, lodgement, loading, landing, clearance, delivery. Sent as it happens, not on request.
- Destination settling-in visit — someone comes to the new address to check how the animal is adjusting, and to sort what always needs sorting in week one.
- Direct line to Sam — at this tier the founder is on the thread from the first call.
- Crate acclimatisation, run properly — the container arrives weeks early, with a plan. See the IATA crate guide.
Who charters, and who does not need to
The restricted breed with a fixed date
A Bulldog, Pug, Persian or Scottish Fold, and a departure in a month where carriers will not take the breed. Charter is the only route that exists. This is the single most common reason our clients charter, and it is a reason, not an indulgence.
The senior or medically fragile animal
Where a vet has advised that the animal should not be unaccompanied, or should not be exposed to a hold for a long sector. We will not make welfare promises we cannot keep — what charter offers is a cabin, a short journey, and you present throughout.
The multi-pet household
Three dogs and two cats moving together turns into a logistics exercise on commercial cargo — capacity on one aircraft, five containers, one clearance. On a charter they travel together, once, with you. Often closer to commercial cost than owners expect.
The compressed timeline
A posting that starts in three weeks, or a departure brought forward. Charter buys dates that commercial cargo cannot offer in a summer window — though fixed veterinary waiting periods still apply, and no aircraft shortens those.
Emergency pet relocation → Emergency pet relocation DubaiAnd who does not need this tier
A healthy medium-sized dog or a cat, travelling October to April, to a destination with a straightforward protocol, from a household where somebody can be at home for collection and at the new address for delivery. That move does not need a nanny or a charter. It needs Managed, done properly, and we would rather sell you that than have you pay for presence you will not use.
Pricing
What white glove costs
From AED 15,000, inclusive of 5% UAE VAT. That is the tier: boarding, nanny accompaniment, live updates, settling-in visit, and everything Managed already covers. Where a route needs a private charter, the charter is quoted separately and billed at cost — it is not inside the AED 15,000 and no honest page would imply otherwise.
Third-party charges sit outside the tier in the same way they do at every level: the rabies titre test, an APHA endorsement, the MOCCAE arrival inspection, destination quarantine nights. All quoted at cost, upfront, in the same document as the fixed figure.
The full line-by-line picture is in our complete pet relocation cost guide, and the documentation behind each protocol is in our UAE pet import requirements guide.
Experience
Why Foufoufly at this tier
Five hundred relocations, zero rejections. We hold direct cargo accounts with Emirates SkyCargo, Etihad Cargo, Qatar Airways Cargo, IAG Cargo, Lufthansa Cargo and AFKLMP Cargo, which is what makes a hard routing possible at all — when one carrier on your route will take a restricted breed in a narrow season, we book it ourselves rather than asking a broker to try.
We are based in Dubai. Not represented here, not working through an agent. When a shipment needs a decision at two in the morning, the person making it is in the same time zone as your pet.
A recent move
A family leaving Dubai for Geneva in August with a French Bulldog and two cats, one of them a Persian. On commercial cargo the answer was no in three separate places: the breed, the month, and the temperature at both ends. Waiting until November was not available to them — the posting had already started. We arranged a shared charter out of Al Maktoum, put all three animals in the cabin with the family, and ran the permits and certification alongside it on the Managed workstream. Total cost landed below what two separate summer cargo attempts and a failed booking would have cost, which is not the usual arithmetic but was in this case.
Sam Jamal founded Foufoufly after seeing how opaque this process is from the owner's side. The practice is IPATA-aligned, every shipment is crated to the IATA Live Animals Regulations, and permits are filed against the current published requirements from MOCCAE and the destination authority. More about the team.
Most-run premium routes: United Kingdom to Dubai, United States to Dubai, Australia to Dubai, Dubai to the United Kingdom and Dubai to Australia.
FAQ
White glove pet relocation — frequently asked questions
Can my pet really fly in the cabin with me from Dubai?
On a private charter, yes — in the cabin beside you, with no crate, no breed restriction and no size limit, because the charter price covers the aircraft and there is no per-pet charge. On a commercial flight out of Dubai, no: Emirates carries no pets in the passenger cabin, so cats and dogs travel through Emirates SkyCargo as manifested cargo. The one commercial exception in the UAE is Etihad, which takes small cats and dogs in the cabin from Abu Dhabi.
How much does a private charter for a pet cost from Dubai?
Indicatively, a seat on a shared charter runs USD 8,000–13,000 depending on route and demand, and a full aircraft runs USD 10,000–15,000 per hour depending on type, routing, season and positioning — with London to Dubai, the most-run premium sector, from around USD 10,000 for the whole aircraft. We bill charter to you at cost without a mark-up, and it is quoted separately from the tier.
What does white glove include that Managed does not?
Four things, all of them presence: pre-flight boarding with a comfort stop, a flight nanny on the same aircraft as your pet, live confirmation at every checkpoint rather than on request, and a settling-in visit at the destination. Private charter is arranged at this tier on request, at cost. The regulatory and logistical work is identical to Managed and done to the same standard.
Is white glove worth it for a healthy dog in winter?
Usually not, and we will say so. A healthy medium-sized dog or a cat travelling between October and April to a destination with a straightforward protocol needs Managed done properly, not presence it will not use. White Glove earns its cost for restricted breeds, fixed summer dates, senior or medically fragile animals, multi-pet households and compressed timelines.
Can a flight nanny hold my pet during the flight?
Not out of Dubai on a commercial flight. Because Emirates permits no cabin pets, your animal is in the hold and the nanny is on the same aircraft — which buys you a professional on the ground at both ends who can chase a delayed offload or resolve a query with the veterinary officer in person. On routes and carriers where in-cabin carriage is permitted, the nanny holds your pet throughout, and we confirm which applies before you book.
Does a charter get around the waiting periods and permits?
No. A charter removes the carrier's constraints — breed restrictions, size limits, crate requirements and temperature embargoes — but it has no effect on government rules. A rabies antibody test and its fixed waiting period, an import permit, a health certificate and any destination quarantine apply exactly as they would on a commercial flight. No aircraft shortens a 180-day wait.
Let us look at your route
Tell us the pets, the destination and the date that cannot move. We will tell you honestly whether this tier is the right answer — and if a cheaper one works, we will point you at it.
hello@foufoufly.com · +971 50 451 0918
Subject to eligibility. Terms apply. All prices in AED, inclusive of 5% UAE VAT. Charter and third-party charges billed at cost.