Bike on Plane - experiences

ROK ON

Hi. Lots of people here have been away in past year with their bikes.
Looking for advice as to how ye packed a nice carbon bike.
That is what bags/boxed did ye use. Any problems with the airlines.
Will be travelling with Ryanair in a few months and already have bike booked in. But I want to be prepared.
Thanks.

ten speed racer

I haven't actually travelled with a bike myself, but I've noticed that people tend to use a bike bag--until they get a bike damaged. Then they get a bike box!

DirkVoodoo

I have only traveled once with a bike, but it was not the most fun experience.

Caroline very kindly lent me her excellent DHB Elsted bike box, hard shell like a samsonite and good foam padding.

Packing the bike was easy enough, removing a few bits (tape your seatpost to mark your height, saves any "my knees are gone because I got my seatpost height wrong" holiday memories) and packed a lot of cycling gear in too.

Problem was I think it weighed about 20-25Kg, it was very heavy and awkward bringing it around, I was lucky that my friend Phil picked me up in Belgium.

Blorg had a good post on how he packed his bike in that bag. Remove seatpost (I wrapped it in bubble wrap also), maybe keep chain in outer ring to stop the teeth shredding up the bag or your gear. Remove the bars, pedals, attach the derailleur to the frame with a zip tie. I'm sure I've missed one or two tips.

biker_joe

I am just back from the canaries, and flew aer lingus, I met on of the lads from here Cashoveroid, who flew Ryan AIR and he said he was charged excess baggage on his bike bag !!! by ALOT !!! so check the small print with Ryan and weight your bike bag yourself before you head to the airport !!!

Aer lingus charge €80 for the bike bag and did not weight it, which is good as I tend to put most of my cycling gear into the bike bag !!

one piece of advice for bike packing is to remove the rear mech, in case it get a belt and breaks the hanger !!

Biker Joe

cipo

google stuff like bike bag packing etc... there s loads on the net about diffrerent / better ways to pack bikes in bags or boxes.

i ve done a lot of travelling with bikes....

bits i ve learned.

tried cardboard boxes ... bike damage
tried soft bike bags, no damage but always sh!ttin yourself till you check the bike at each end.... not nice if you ve got a week planned on the bike somewhere nice....

if you can afford it and especially with your nice carbon bike just buy a bike box...

peace of mind.

get, if possible and funds allow, one that has 4wheels and can be wheeled around airport / train station, streets!!! if need be.

like one of these....

bikeboxalan.co.uk... copy of scicon, brilliant brilliant brilliant quality!!
the scicon bike box.... very expensive but very good
these two will last for years.

trico iron case is good also but two wheels means you re taking alot of the load on your arm when walking through airports etc

i have the dhb from wiggle. cheaper. dont expect it to last very long but it will do the job of keeping the baggage launchers from breaking a bike for a few trips.

if you use a softbag.... use pipe insulation or lots of bubble wrap on all tubes. remove rear derailleur as biker joe said and wrap in bubble wrap then tape to seatstays inside the frame.

good trick..... get a thick sponge, tape it to your bottom of the chainset to stop sharp teeth cutting through the bag!

get plastic spacers from a bike shop to place in the front fork and rear dropout to stop frame getting compressed when flung about!!

wedge cardboard layered on both sides of softbag to spread the blow also, it gives surprisingly good protection.

ryanair will bend you over on weight as usual.... so be prepared!!

aerlingus as said by biker joe 40 euro each way.

check with whoever you re flying with and get prints outs of their policy / rules if possible so they cant say we cant take that!!

i ve been on training camps with 17/18 lads from the same airport and same flight and no problems carrying all 17/18 bikes in boxes so i reckon any of them that try to stop you travelling with a bike are full of it and chancin their arm.

saying that i ve never been refused with a bike and never had hassle checkin it in!!!

i ll think of more...

Dave

redmenace1

Hi there

i travelled many times with the bike in a box to France/Spain and had no problems. However last year coming back from Gerona in Spain with Ryanair, I was asked to wheel the box to oversize & there were a few raised eyebrows when the box went on the scales @ 30kg plus. Box alone is a heavy bugger at about 16kgs.However I wasn't asked for extras yo-yos.

I think boxes were a bit more acceptable in the past but nowadays airlines are trying to fleece passengers. Mate of mine comes from USA and last year was first time they reminded him of weight restrictions. Again they didn't enforce it.

In time I can see all airlines strictly enforcing weight limits so I may eventually have to use a bike bag. Hope this helps.:(

Mosiki

I use a bike bag for travelling on train in Ireland, I bought a few lengths of pipe foam to wrap around forks, rear mech, and just about everything else to protect it, worked fine.

However, i'm travelling to Marmotte in July and I wouldnt feel comfortable with the bag on the plane so I'm defo gonna get a box. Prob end up selling the bag.

Eggie.

ROK ON

Thanks for the tips. I have actually bought a Scicon bike bag. It was well reviewed even though it is a bag rather than a box.

dermot_sheehan

I flew bmi from heathrow Terminal 1 two years ago with a hybrid.

Booked it online for £15, cycled through heathrow cycle tunnel to terminal 1.

Checked in, went to oversized luggage x ray where they swabbed bike for explosives. I deflated tires and they rolled it away.

2 hours later a luggage guy rolled it into dublin airports luggage area.

Pumped up tires, cycled home from airport.

Golfanatic

ask a bike shop to do it for you because they have boxes already mikes bikes in dun laoghaire do it i think

velopeloton

ROK ON wrote: »

Thanks for the tips. I have actually bought a Scicon bike bag. It was well reviewed even though it is a bag rather than a box.

I have a Scicon bag and have traveled many times with it , Ryanair, Easyjet, Air France, Aer Lingus, British Airways & Iberia and never had any problems. While sitting on a plane I actually seen 2 Ryanair baggage handlers reading the side of the bag and then very carefully lifting it onto the plane.

blorg

Personally I would not trust a carbon bike in other than a hard shell case. YMMV. My titanium, aluminium and my girlfriend's steel tourers we have just cycled up to the airport as is, completely unboxed, and they have always been fine. My experience has generally been that a bike completely unbagged is treated better by the handlers.

Ryanair have a weight limit of 20kg which they have started enforcing in Dublin airport which we flew out of last week. They didn't weigh on the way back (Malaga.)

Aer Lingus have an even worse 15kg limit depending on how you read their website and more than one person I know has been asked for excess over this although they MAY be less pressing on it than Ryanair.

I would not go near the dhb box. It is fragile and extremely damage prone (I have broken two myself, as have others I know.) It is also extremely heavy, around 14.5kg on its own, which means problems with the weight restrictions. It is also a pain in the neck to pack (although you do get good at it with practice.) I got a B&W blue bike box which is excellent by comparison and lighter, around 9.5kg. Total was 21kg with the box, bike and a few bits like tools in there. MUCH easier to pack.

In future flying I am going to book an extra checked bag so if necessary I can check stuff like the saddle, seatpost and tools separately which will 100% ensure the main box is under 20kg.

IM0

ROK ON wrote: »

Thanks for the tips. I have actually bought a Scicon bike bag. It was well reviewed even though it is a bag rather than a box.

you may as well have bought cheap canvas bag or something and paid the rest for foam padding for all they will do, its great if it rains or whatever (rain protcetion) , but not too hot when the 'throwers' get hold of it , if it gets a drop its toast, wheras a cardboard bikebox is like the crumplezones in a car, they crumple to take the impacts to save the occcupants/contents :cool:

its the one occasion in life where you do get something for nothing [they're free in bikeshops!] and work better than anything except the heaviest HARD cases.

MrCreosote

Took a longhaul flight last year with the bike which I packed in a soft bag very carefully with foam, padding and bubblewrap.

No problems with checking the bike in but it had a nice crack along the frame when I unpacked in Ireland. Write-off.

I know people who have done plenty of flights without problems with a soft bag but in future I'd go full-on hardcase if weight wasn't a problem or get the LBS to box it.

TinyExplosions

I've used the 'bring your bike unpacked' method, and a DHB bike box, and in both cases was fine (the first was with the Alu Focus, second the PX). I'll echo what Blorg said about the DHB being heavy, the Scion seems a better bet, cos the weight restriction is a bit crap at the moment

iregk

I have had it with these motherf**kin bikes on this motherf**kin plane!

Caroline_ie

I managed to get by bike box to weight bang on 20kg on my way back from malaga by removing: Pedals, skewers, Tired and tubes, seatpost and saddle and putting them on my checked luggage ... that was also bang on 15kg after that... they never weighed the case in Malaga though.

crashoveroid

biker_joe wrote: »

I am just back from the canaries, and flew aer lingus, I met on of the lads from here Cashoveroid, who flew Ryan AIR and he said he was charged excess baggage on his bike bag !!! by ALOT !!! so check the small print with Ryan and weight your bike bag yourself before you head to the airport !!!

Aer lingus charge €80 for the bike bag and did not weight it, which is good as I tend to put most of my cycling gear into the bike bag !!

one piece of advice for bike packing is to remove the rear mech, in case it get a belt and breaks the hanger !!

Biker Joe

I will never fly Ryanair again i got done going to Gran Canaria first the normal €80 euro return i was fine with that another €180.00 at Dublin airport and another €150.00 euro on the way home. So outside my own flight and my normal baggage it cost me €410 to bring my bike with me.

so im not a happy bunny i could of rented one of the Cannondales for the week and saved some money
I could have put that amount of money towards nice set of rims.
So if your flying ryanair make sure you weight your bike first and you my need to check another bag as well as a friend of mine got caught in Shannon as well and in total between the 4 of them it cost up to €800 extra.

Caroline_ie

The Ryan air scales in Dublin are a bit funny though. There are 2 or them, the one of the left weighed my box at 18kg the one on the right at 23kg.
The trick is to push the box far towards the wall of the left scale ... it gives you a lower weight.

Ryaner

blorg wrote: »

Ryanair have a weight limit of 20kg which they have started enforcing in Dublin airport which we flew out of last week. They didn't weigh on the way back (Malaga.)

Was this in the new Airport in Malaga last week?

blorg

crashoveroid wrote: »

I will never fly Ryanair again i got done going to Gran Canaria first the normal €80 euro return i was fine with that another €180.00 at Dublin airport and another €150.00 euro on the way home. So outside my own flight and my normal baggage it cost me €410 to bring my bike with me.

In fairness though that does sound like you were 9kg over the weight limit? I presume you stuffed the bike box full of all your clothes, etc. I used to do that when the limits were 32kg but not any more when they have a published 20kg, I try to get it as near as possible...

Note Aer Lingus have a 15kg limit, they may not enforce it as much but I know people who have had excess demanded from them over this.

Since Ryanair have started enforcing their limit a bit more I would make the effort to get it in under, just in case. If you check a bag and have a reasonable bike box this should be possible. I was 21kg coming back and that was without a checked bag, not making any special effort. Pedals, saddlebag, tools, liquids, bottles, would have brought that down way under 20kg no problem. Saddle and seatpost also an option but probably not even necessary.

Also good excuse to weightweenie your bike, have just bought some nice new carbon bars

blorg

Caroline_ie wrote: »

The Ryan air scales in Dublin are a bit funny though. There are 2 or them, the one of the left weighed my box at 18kg the one on the right at 23kg.
The trick is to push the box far towards the wall of the left scale ... it gives you a lower weight.

You have to be careful though. I weighed in first in Dublin at 23kg and then said I would rearrange, taking lots of stuff out (helmet, shoes, saddle/seatpost etc), put it back on pushed towards the back and now it was weighing 13.5kg! No way was she going to believe that! So I inched it forward until it read 19.8kg. Actual weight I had it at was 20.5kg. Then I got my baggage tag, took it around the corner and put everything back in again.

Ryaner wrote:

Was this in the new Airport in Malaga last week?

It was the old terminal, don't think the new one is open yet.

To be honest it seems to depend on who you get, the check in agent who checked it the second time in Dublin wasn't too bothered and took the 19.8 at face value while the first one made me weigh it on both scales until we had a consistent number!

r0qi4162fux9kg

I brought my bike back from Berlin, it was handy enough. I just picked up a box from a bike shop, took the front wheel, pedals, seat and turned the handle bars. Wrapped everything in bubble rap and slipped it into the box. They don't weigh bikes in schoenefeld airport just x-ray the box. It cost an E30 with ryanair.

Captain Havoc

Raam

blorg wrote: »

made me weigh it on both scales until we had a consistent number!

Doesn't inspire much confidence in the scales really.

crashoveroid

Raam wrote: »

Doesn't inspire much confidence in the scales really.

Wait till ryanair bring in a charge for using the scales:)