dgagitw

Fly to Paris then take the Eurostar to London - that will extend the time the poor moggy is confined to a carrier of course. I second the point of view that being in the hold is best and much less stressful than the alternatives.

scilly

I thought animals in the cabin had ot be contained in a carrier, that they were no allowed to be out of that carrier and held on one's knee or played with.

Fellow passengers with allergies could also cause you problems, depending on the airline's policies

bert07

You cannot fly into the UK with an animal as excess baggage/in the cabin. You can leave the country like this but not return.

Options are use petsaway or equivalent. Or, fly into france/ireland/Holland and have them as excess baggage etc and drive over on the eurotunnel/train eurostar.

We did this last year. I was already in the UK and husband flew to amsterdam, I drove to amsterdam and met him there with the cats and we then drove back to france and over the tunnel. (We'd have gone to paris but flights weren't there at that point). It was actually really simple even though it sounds mental).
We stopped in a hotel in belgium so the cats could have a wander around the hotel room.

This process was purely a price/timing/location thing - neither journey would be ideal for cats but they actually were much calmer with this one than the original flight over in hold because they knew us so were reassured by hearing us despite the time taking longer.

Jerseygirl

You cannot fly into the UK with a pet in the cabin...unless it’s a service animal. You could fly into a 3rd country which allows you to do so...then travel to the UK by another form of transport ie car.

You cannot have the cat on your lap. He must be in the pet carrier.. underneath the seat in front of you. Hopefully no one nearby is allergic to cats.

RLR

I hold him in the carrier bag. We had only 2 seats, nobody around.
We had to put down our cat, he suddenly got very bad, problems with liver and heart.