Pet Transport India to Germany

The sequence is fixed. Microchip first, then the rabies vaccination at twelve weeks of age or older, then a minimum thirty-day gap before the blood draw. The sample needs to reach 0.5 IU/ml or better, and it must be tested at an EU-designated laboratory. From the draw date, three months must pass before your pet may enter Germany.

The Indian complication is where the testing happens. The European Commission publishes a list of designated laboratories in non-EU countries, and India is not on it. Indian labs quote perfectly reasonable prices for rabies antibody testing, roughly INR 3,000 to 8,000 depending on the provider, and those tests are useful for other purposes. They are not EU-valid. What you are actually buying for a German move is the collection and international forwarding of the sample to a designated laboratory abroad, plus that laboratory’s fee.

Ask your vet directly: which designated laboratory will this sample go to? If the answer is a domestic laboratory name, the test will not do what you need. Get that settled before the blood is drawn rather than after the three months have elapsed.

The three-month clock runs from the draw date, not the result date, so courier time does not extend your wait. A lost or spoiled sample, however, means drawing again and starting the three months over.

India’s export side runs through the Animal Quarantine and Certification Service, which has existed since 1969-70 and operates from exactly six offices: New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata. A pet living anywhere else travels to one of the six.

You need a health certificate from your own veterinarian plus AQCS certification obtained within seven days of export, and the AQCS certificate is valid ten days from issue. On the No Objection Certificate fee, AQCS contradicts itself: its standard operating procedure states no charge is levied for pet import or export NOCs, while its published FAQ quotes Rs 1,000 per application. Ask the station when you apply rather than budgeting on either figure.

Notice how that dovetails with the European side. The EU Animal Health Certificate is also valid ten days from issue to entry. The two documents therefore share what is effectively a single ten-day window, with no slack for a delayed or rebooked flight. Treat any schedule change in that last week as a reason to re-check both certificates rather than assume they still line up.

Lufthansa flies nonstop from Delhi to Frankfurt about twice daily and to Munich about daily, and from Mumbai to Frankfurt about twice daily and to Munich, at roughly eight to nine hours. Air India also flies Delhi to Frankfurt nonstop and offers cabin carriage for pets up to 10kg including carrier on selected routes, though cabin availability is route-specific and worth confirming for the Frankfurt sector.

Lufthansa’s cabin limit is 8kg including the carrier, with the carrier no more than 118cm in total dimensions, booked at least 72 hours ahead, up to two pets per passenger. Crates exceeding 125 by 75 by 85 centimetres must move as manifest cargo through registered agents, and since March 2026 Lufthansa Cargo accepts only kennels fully compliant with the IATA LH05 standard, which retires some older crates.

The rule that actually governs your travel date is temperature. Lufthansa will not carry an animal when the temperature exceeds 29.4C or falls below 7.2C at any airport on the routing. Delhi and Mumbai spend a good part of the year above that ceiling, so in practice the paperwork can be perfect and the flight still unavailable. Plan the arrival for the cooler months where you can, and book early morning departures where you cannot.

Cargo-routed pets arriving at Frankfurt are handled at Lufthansa Cargo’s Animal Lounge, a dedicated facility of roughly 43,000 square feet with separate import, export, transit and health inspection zones, 61 dog kennels and quiet areas for cats. It is one of the better arrival experiences in Europe for an animal that has flown in the hold.