SNCF: finally a train ticket at a fixed price for animals, regardless of their weight

“For the animals, as always with the SNCF, it was quite a mess in the prices…” Like Olivier, dog owners will see things a little more clearly when booking their train journey.

Since Thursday, the SNCF has set up a fixed and single price for “dogs, cats, rodents, domestic rabbits, aviary birds, reptiles and amphibians”: 7 euros by TGV Inoui and Intercités, 10 euros by Ouigo.

Whatever the animal, its weight, or the length of its journey.

“Until now, animals weighing less than 6 kg transported in a container paid 7 euros by TGV Inoui and those over 6 kg paid half the price of the kilometer scale.

We sometimes arrived at aberrations where a master who booked in advance paid less for his ticket than his dog”, concedes Jérôme Laffon, marketing director of the SNCF.

Thus a Paris-Avignon TGV trip starts at 25 euros (second class call price) for the master while the ticket for his dog over 6 kg cost 43.80 euros.

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For the Paris-Hyères trip, which Olivier and his wife Cécile regularly frequent, it was 25 euros in call price for them, around 40 euros by booking in advance for Easter or April and… 52.20 euros for their little cavalier king charles dog of 8 kg!

“The first time, I selected in good faith the

at 7 euros, I had not seen that it was reserved for dogs under 6 kg, confides the resident of Val-d 'oise.

But since then, given the price difference, we cheat all the time on the TGV Inoui.

It's too expensive !

And in Ouigo, it was double: 15 euros.

Incomprehensible…”

"We are simplifying the price and making it more accessible", says Jérôme Laffon today.

In the Ouigo, dogs and cats now pay 10 euros instead of 15 euros.

The animal therefore pays more in the low-cost TGV than in the classic TGV.

A paradox... "No, it is in the logic of low-cost companies to have a very affordable ticket price and other paid services, such as luggage, which are added as an option", pleads the marketing director of the SNCF.

No need to go to the store to buy the ticket for your animal

Another novelty, it is no longer necessary to go to the store to buy or collect the ticket for your animal.

The procedure is now digitized from start to finish on the SNCF Connect website or application.

The travel conditions remain the same: small animals must be transported in a container, large dogs must wear a muzzle.

They don't have a reserved seat, they travel on their owner's lap or at their feet.

The number of animals per train is not capped by the SNCF.

Don't we run the risk of traveling in a car full of dobermans and snakes?

"We'll see how it goes, but it's very unlikely because we're starting from a very low base," said Jérôme Laffon.

We transport around 600,000 animals in a normal year.

This represents one customer in 500, or one animal per train on average.

And more often than not, it's a cat in its box.

The dog is less frequent and the big dog even less.

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