Airline Baggage Regulation / Flying with Bikes

Perhaps they should weigh passengers and luggage together? Skinny cyclists would evade surcharge...

**Thompson **were good when I used them last year. I think it was about £15 extra in total to take the bike bag.
I know everyone doesn't get the same treatment, but my bike was fine in a cheapo bike bag.

Perhaps they should weigh passengers and luggage together? Skinny cyclists would evade surcharge...

Hippy Clive and myself would be fucked

just good for hillclimbers

More excuse for Carbon!

With easyjet if you take out the bike carriage which is about £!8.50 I think then your total luggage allowance goes up to 50kg which is really useful. So you can have up to 32kg in one bag and the remaining 18kg in another. this is much cheaper than excess baggage and worth knowing.

easyjet have 50kg luggage allowance? Are you sure?

They seem to have changed the website but in Novmeber I flew with a bike and by paying for a bike you increased your luggage allowance to 50kg as long as no one item was more than 32kg. They probably dont advertise this but someone with a bit more time could find out as it definitely was the case.

I had 47kg and didnt get charged.

Sounds ok.. pity they don't fly to Trieste. :(
http://www.easyjet.com/en/planning/baggage.html

okay travelling with bike on worldwide tour update:

So far I've been London to Tokyo, Tokyo to Melbourne, Melbourne to Sydney.

The first bike bag a cheap £40 cinelli branded one from Evans, was utter shite, too big, cheap traps, which broke (when I admittedly overloaded it), before I got to heathrow. So muttered under breath and got on with it.
Bought a foldable luggage trolley to wheel bag on, which has proved invaluable in lugging it around airports, to and from airports and to my hostels.
Fortunately got this lovely bike bag from Jol, which is so much better its unbelievable, will have some photos up on the blog, when I can get to an internet cafe and upload them.
http://www.groundeffect.co.nz/product-detail-TAR-BAG.htm

Weight wise, I've been alot over London to Tokyo, and paid the excess think it was like £30. Inexperienced packing. Then so far I've been right on the edge of my round the world ticket luggage allowance, two bags at 23kg, per bag. I've been a couple of hundred grams over and they've just swiped it through.
Flown so far with BA and Qantas, and will be flying with American when I hit the states...

For the record, I've been flying Emirates to Australia. Their Economy luggage limit is 30kg, not 20kg.

This is great for bringing bikes and stuff back. Anyone wanna buy a track bike?

Its also worth signing up for the frequent flyer programme, I think one flight back to Aus, plus one other shortish flight is enough to get you up to the silver level which increases you luggage allowance to 40kg at no extra cost.

I've just flown twice to Oz. That was probably a few points with them.
Since I hope not to repeat this trip for a LONG LONG LONG LONG LONG time.. I'm not sure I'll need freq flyer membership. Thanks for the tip though. :)

I've adjusted the original post to allow for Hippy's comments...feel free to add other notes re airlines and I'll add

Virgin Atlantic's per-bike weight limit has now dropped to 23kg (the first post suggests that it's still 32kg).

One additional note that might be worth mentioning is that you don't need to pre-book your bike with either BA or Virgin Atlantic: you can simply turn up at the airport with it.

And finally, if you're looking for a case, I'm fairly sure you can do better than this hard case from the Edinburgh Bicycle Cooperative. The clamps and catches have proven hopelessly fragile: there were six of them when Mrs 30miles bought her case, but three of them have broken in the space of just four flights, and she's now reliant on duct tape and luck to hold the thing together.

(I've got a Pika Packworks EEP, which is an absolutely fantastic piece of kit, but the shipping charges to the UK are prohibitively enormous. I picked mine up in the US after flying out there with my bike in a cardboard box.)

okay travelling with bike on worldwide tour update:

So far I've been London to Tokyo, Tokyo to Melbourne, Melbourne to Sydney.

The first bike bag a cheap £40 cinelli branded one from Evans, was utter shite, too big, cheap traps, which broke (when I admittedly overloaded it), before I got to heathrow. So muttered under breath and got on with it.
Bought a foldable luggage trolley to wheel bag on, which has proved invaluable in lugging it around airports, to and from airports and to my hostels.
Fortunately got this lovely bike bag from Jol, which is so much better its unbelievable, will have some photos up on the blog, when I can get to an internet cafe and upload them.
http://www.groundeffect.co.nz/product-detail-TAR-BAG.htm

Weight wise, I've been alot over London to Tokyo, and paid the excess think it was like £30. Inexperienced packing. Then so far I've been right on the edge of my round the world ticket luggage allowance, two bags at 23kg, per bag. I've been a couple of hundred grams over and they've just swiped it through.
Flown so far with BA and Qantas, and will be flying with American when I hit the states...

Anyone know if these bags are sold in any shops in London? I need a bag for Saturday and I've been lazy about getting one.

Anyone have any experience of bikes on ryanair?

Their website seems to be saying if you pay the fee it can weight 20 kilo on top of your normal baggage. Is that true? I don't put it past ryanair to change their conditions at a moments notice.

Also anyone got an idea how much a langster weighs? I can't imagine it's 20k.

Finally anyone got a recommendation on a good bike bag? I don't mind spending a bit if it's worth it, though I don't see myself using it more than once or twice a year.

Also anyone got an idea how much a langster weighs? I can't imagine it's 20k.

Ok, looks like it's just over 10Kg, so that's at least that answered.

I always fly BA usually 5-10 times with my bike per year and there policy is 23kg luggage. 23kg for your bike and one carry on.
I always have the max and have 2 carry ons(Big backpack and a helmet bag)
Only once was it questioned...

And I always use a Cardboard box.Always

Anyone have any experience of bikes on ryanair?

Their website seems to be saying if you pay the fee it can weight 20 kilo on top of your normal baggage. Is that true? I don't put it past ryanair to change their conditions at a moments notice.

I took my bike from Stansted to Carcassonne and back with Ryanair last year, having pre-booked and paid for it when I bought the tickets. (Flights: £2. Booking fee: £10. Bike: £60.) No problems whatsoever.

fuck ba
i'm a silver club member (work miles built up) and they still fucking charge me on oz trips - 30 quid.. and to top it off the fucktard jobsworths at excess baggage put it through 4 times .. yes 120 quid for one journey.

Have done some basic updates to the original post. Keep comments coming

Travel Tip. Use a thin L-shaped steel plate with two holes drilled into it, just wider than the cardboard bike box and attach coaster wheels off something and you have a far easier way of transporting your bike in the airport, etc. The wheels unscrew when you load it onto the plane.

Bastard Japan Air charge anything other than a folding bike at excess prices which London to Tokyo is about 70 quid a kilo!

Having to leave my poor wheels behind and stuff my frame in my suitcase.

I would take this up with the airline, their website seems to sing a different story

https://web1.jal.co.jp/en/inter/service/bag/sports.html

Just booked internal flights with air new Zealand and they charge you like $50 more for your flight to have two pieces of checked luggage at 25kg each.

anyone flown with iberia? ive just read that they charge €75 per flight as bikes are handled as excess baggage. bit outragous as for the route im looking at, london-bilbao, iberia uses vueling (iberia's budget airline) and they charge €45 per flight.