Airline Baggage Regulation / Flying with Bikes

When packing your bike, do remember that the baggage handlers in almost all airports are SYPHILITIC WHOREMONGERS.

It's not as if I'm sore about all the dings, broken dropouts and wonky wheels they've inflicted on my beloved bikes......

Can anyone reccomend a good, inexpensive bike bag, or better yet would anyone have one theyd be willing to sell me for cheapish?

decathlon do a little fold up backpack one.

BA are great - i packed my bike into a box and carried my hand luggage with me several times between london and nyc this year. they looked after it well.

How important is it to remove pedals? My pedals are pretty stuck, cant get them to budge an inch, can I just leave them like that or will it damage the bike if I travel with them that way?

How important is it to remove pedals? My pedals are pretty stuck, cant get them to budge an inch, can I just leave them like that or will it damage the bike if I travel with them that way?

alan key or pedal spanner?

you need to make the handle longer... if alan key you can put a 15mm ring spanner over the end of the alan key to give yourself more leverage. if it's a spanner you'll have to improvise with something else.

also, take the pedals off first while the wheels and chain are on so you have something to push against.

forgot to say - i would definitely take them off. are you packing the bike in a hard case or bag?

Bag, they are on far too tight will have to take to lbs to get them off instead

are you doing it with the bike in one piece? (wheels and chain on) that is important.

you CAN do it - you just need more leverage. that is all your lbs will do...

Just putting it out there - You are turning the spanner in the right direction, yeh?...

Yeah Im well aware of the whole clockwise/anti clockwise thing, I just dont have a proper pedal spanner and they were stuck on really tight. Took it to the lbs and they got em off no prob.

Can anyone reccomend a good, inexpensive bike bag, or better yet would anyone have one theyd be willing to sell me for cheapish?

They don't get any cheaper than a cardboard box (free) from your local bike store

Have had a go at updating with more recent feedback but please feel free to post feedback and PM me with details of your own experiences

The good: BA, whose allowances remain fair and who didn't charge me excess when my bike case was a couple of kilos overweight on a recent flight.

Also good: Nice Airport. I've already mentioned this on the Who knows France? thread, but any airport that provides a designated bike assembly area with free-to-use workstand and a few tools in the baggage reclaim area deserves praise in plenty of places.

The bad: Ryanair, who increased their bike charges to £40 per one-way flight earlier this year.

A box has the minor advantage of being tamper-evident, I mean you should see straight away if bits have been crushed so you can unpack there and then and complain, for what it's worth.

It's still a crap shoot if you don't have a hard case.

Plan for actively wicked luggage handlers and hope for the best.

Hi...

I recently borrowed a hard case from TS which protected my bike but took up most of my baggage allowance. Does anyone have any experience of these EVA jobbies? I'll be transporting a Carbon road bike, so not sure if these are sufficiently robust.

http://www.ribblecycles.co.uk/sp/road-track-bike/EVA-Bike-Pod-Suitcase/POLRBIKC200000000000?utm_campaign=Googlebase&utm_medium=organic&utm_source=Googlebase

A friend has one, and has flown with it frequently without any damage to his bike. I was going to get one, but since Edie arrived my days of foreign cycling trips are over (for now at least).

Thanks andy... I reckon I'll give it a go. Im just a bit nervous about 4000 suitcases full of mind the gap t-shirts and beefeater fridge magnets squashing my carbon tubes. I guess I just give it a thorough going over for any imperfections afterwards.

As some of you know my bike got a little dinged up by the airline despite using a decent bike box returning from Berlin last year. As a result I'm uncomfortable using any kind of box as I believe the box led the handlers to treat the contents with less care than they normally would. (Everyone else on my flight came back with pristine bike despite them using just tarpaulin).

Given my experience what would you do: a simple bike bag or just clear cellophane with pipe lagging on the frames?

If figure the more exposed the bike the more care they'll take of the bike...

its crabon... I cant just use cellophane.

What kind of box did you use?

A polaris like this:

The box was destroyed as was a brand new wound up fork + some frame damage..Never again.

I'll try again:

hmmm.... thats exactly what i was thinking of getting.

were you insured? I dont really care if it gets trashed if they pay for it. im slightly worried about not noticing damage and having the bike fail at speed though

I'd take a picture of the contents just before you zip it up. Airlines are in a mandatory scheme that will cover damage to your contents upto 9 or £1200, so as long as the bike + bag don't come upto that fee you should be ok. Personally I'd get additional insurace for the flight(s).