Every “wire vs plastic crate” comparison we found while researching this page was written for house training or everyday travel. None asked the question a fleeing household actually has: which one do you grab, how fast does it go together, will it fly if you leave by air, and does either one hold up if the vehicle carrying it gets hit. That’s the comparison this page runs.
We do spec-and-evidence analysis, not hands-on testing, and we say so plainly: every figure below traces to a manufacturer’s own product page, a manufacturer’s Amazon listing, or a named authority like the Center for Pet Safety or IATA, cited per row. See our review methodology for how we work.
MidWest Homes for Pets and Petmate are trademarks of their respective owners; EmergencyPetPrep is not affiliated with or endorsed by either.
The Bottom Line, Up Front
If storage space is your real constraint (a packed SUV, a small apartment, a garage that already holds a hurricane kit), a folding wire crate wins. It collapses flat in seconds, breathes better in the heat that usually accompanies an evacuation order, and is the cheapest way to size up to a large dog. The trade-off is real: it’s not accepted for air travel, and it’s the crate type Center for Pet Safety crash-tested and found offers essentially no protection in a collision.
If your dog might need to fly, or a shelter, boarding facility, or breeder specifically requires an IATA-compliant kennel, a rigid plastic crate is the one to own, and it needs to be the right rigid plastic crate. A small hard-shell carrier and a true IATA-compliant kennel are not the same product, which is exactly the mix-up we untangle below.
Neither material, wire or standard plastic, is crash-tested. That’s a separate, narrower product category (double-wall rotomolded crates), and it’s covered in full on our vehicle loading and restraints guide.
Quick-Look Spec Table
|
Wire (iCrate 42in) |
Small Plastic (Petmate 24in) |
IATA Plastic (Sky Kennel 36in) |
| Dog weight range |
71-90 lbs |
Up to 15 lbs |
50-70 lbs |
| Folds flat? |
Yes, tool-free |
No |
No |
| Assembly |
Tool-free snap-together |
Tool-free |
Wing nuts, tools needed |
| Airflow |
Open wire, best of the three |
Mesh vents + wire door |
Solid sides, 4-way vent openings |
| IATA-compliant? |
No; open wire mesh alone is not accepted |
No claim on Petmate’s own page |
Yes, per Petmate’s own page (2025 IATA edition) |
| CPS crash-certified? |
No |
No |
No |
| Empty weight |
Not published by MidWest |
Not published by Petmate |
20.75 lbs |
Folds Flat vs. Permanent Footprint: The Storage Question Nobody Else Asks
Most “wire vs plastic” articles compare these two for everyday home use, where storage rarely matters because the crate lives in one spot year-round. An evacuation kit is different. You’re either storing the crate between emergencies and grabbing it fast when a hurricane or wildfire warning goes out, or you’re keeping it assembled and ready during active season and only breaking it down in the off-months.
MidWest’s own page for the iCrate line states it “sets up in seconds and folds flat for storage,” with a tool-free snap-together design. Neither Petmate crate here makes an equivalent claim; both are rigid shells that hold one fixed footprint whether in use or sitting empty in a closet. For a household with one large dog and limited storage, that difference alone can decide the purchase.
Here’s the part other comparisons skip: during an actual evacuation, already-assembled beats folded, regardless of material. Digging a folded crate out, unfolding it, and locking the panels into place costs time you may not have when an order comes with hours of notice, not days. If you’re in an active hurricane or wildfire corridor, the practical move during peak season (roughly June through November for hurricanes, longer for wildfire risk in parts of the West) is to leave the crate assembled and ready near the door, and only fold it down for off-season storage. We haven’t seen an independent lab time a fold-and-carry sequence against a pre-assembled crate, so we won’t invent a seconds-based comparison; MidWest’s own “seconds” claim is the only number on record, and we’re citing it as their claim, not our test.
Airflow and Heat: Where Wire Has a Real Edge
Evacuations cluster around hot months. Hurricane season runs through the back half of the year and wildfire risk is active right now, in July 2026. A crated pet can’t move to a cooler spot the way a loose one could, so airflow inside the crate matters more than it does on a routine vet trip.
An open wire frame simply has more surface area exchanging air than a solid-sided plastic shell does, which is why MidWest markets the iCrate’s “wire frame ensures proper ventilation and visibility.” The Petmate Sky Kennel counters with what it calls four-way ventilation, door, side, and back openings over an otherwise solid shell, per its own product page, but the total open area is still smaller than an all-wire design by construction. Neither advantage changes the baseline vehicle-heat rule: never leave any pet crated and unattended in a parked car, wire or plastic, at any outdoor temperature. Airflow inside the crate is a comfort factor during an evacuation drive, not a reason to leave a pet alone in a hot vehicle.
Airline and IATA Acceptance: The Wire Crate’s Hard No
This is the clearest line in the whole comparison, and it’s worth stating without hedging. Multiple pet-travel guides that quote IATA’s own container-requirements document agree: containers made entirely of open wire mesh are not acceptable for transporting an animal by air. IATA’s accepted materials are rigid plastic, fiberglass, metal, or plywood, with solid sides and specific, sized ventilation openings, not an open wire frame you can see straight through.
That rules out the wire iCrate entirely for a flight. It doesn’t automatically clear either Petmate crate, either. The small Petmate Two Door Top & Front Load Kennel makes no airline-compliance claim on Petmate’s own current product page, even though some retailer listing titles describe it as “Airline Compliant.” Treat that phrase with real skepticism until you confirm it against your airline’s actual policy; it’s a travel-and-vet kennel first. The Petmate Sky Kennel is the one built for this: Petmate’s own page states it meets the 51st edition (2025) of IATA’s Live Animals Regulation, with the caveat, also from Petmate, to confirm specifics with your airline before you fly. If air travel is genuinely part of your plan, size to the Sky Kennel line, not the smaller hard-shell kennel or the wire crate.
Pinch, Collapse, and Escape Risk: What Each Material Gets Wrong
No crate is risk-free, and it’s worth naming the specific failure mode for each material instead of treating “safe” as a checkbox.
Wire’s failure mode is entanglement and collapse. Open bars and gaps mean a collar, tag, or paw can catch. AKC’s own crate-training guidance is direct about this: remove a dog’s collar before crating, specifically because a caught tag can lead to strangulation as a panicked dog fights to free itself. That’s general crating advice, not evacuation-specific, but it applies with more force during a stressful, chaotic load-out. Collapse is the other wire risk, and it’s not theoretical: Center for Pet Safety’s 2015 crash study put a MidWest-brand wire kennel through two anchoring setups, once with off-the-shelf rubber straps and once with CPS’s own reinforced straps, and the crate structurally failed both times.
Plastic’s failure mode is different: it doesn’t flex. A rigid shell won’t collapse the way wire does, but a cracked latch or broken hinge under stress (a dog thrashing, a crate dropped during a rushed load-in) can pop a door open with no give to absorb the force first. Neither Petmate crate here publishes a stress or drop rating, so we won’t imply one exists. The mitigation is the same for both materials: inspect latches, hinges, and welds before every hurricane or wildfire season, and replace anything showing metal fatigue or a hairline crack rather than trusting it through one more emergency.
The Crash-Safety Honesty Section
We want to say this plainly rather than bury it in a footnote: neither a folding wire crate nor a standard single-wall plastic crate, IATA-compliant or not, is crash-tested. Center for Pet Safety is the only independent US nonprofit that publishes crash-test results for pet crates and carriers, and its current certified list runs to a small set of double-wall rotomolded crates purpose-built for that job, not the crate types compared here. CPS’s 2015 study, run with a MidWest-brand wire kennel, is the direct evidence behind our wire-crate crash warning above; we found no equivalent published crash data, positive or negative, for either Petmate crate, and we won’t assume a result that doesn’t exist.
If a vehicle collision is genuinely your top concern, that’s a different buying decision than the one this page answers. Our vehicle loading and restraints for multiple pets guide covers the CPS-certified crates (Gunner, Lucky Duck, Cabela’s for hard crates; Diggs, Away, PawsInCar for soft carriers) built and tested specifically for that.