We've moved the cat TO the UK and then moved the cat BACK to the US. Moved the cat back this time in January, so this is recent info. You can only move the pet on direct flights -- so my advice is to use United. We've used Virgin in the past and they charged us over 500 pounds to move the cat -- we were on the same flight as the cat so it wasn't like we were shipping it with out us. We were all set to use them again, when the airport strikes happened in January 2008. I was pregnant, and not about to faff about, so we ended up calling United who could also take the cat. They said to NOT ship him as cargo -- which is what Virgin was having us do each time -- and instead to simply have his as an extra piece of luggage. He still had to go into the hold, and had to be in the carrier, but as they were now looking at him as an extra piece of luggage it ended up being something like 50 pounds instead of 500. REALLY. Plus, they were VERY nice and helpful. We had to tell them ahead of time we would be having this "extra piece of luggage" and it was a cat since they only have room for a certain number of pets. When we showed up at Heathrow, somehow that bit of info had been lost so they didn't actually know we were bringing the cat, but that was no problem. They took GREAT care of us and we didn't have to go to any special place to drop the cat off or anything like we did with Virgin. It saved us LOADS of money and I would use them again in the future.