Philly Tandem

For those who own a Santana Cabrio triplet and wonder how to get the center section on an airplane without oversize fees, here are some photos of a custom crate I built for the center section of our Santana Cabrio triplet. We successfully flew with this back and forth to Europe in summer 2010, and plan to use it for future trips. We fit our triplet plus most all of the clothes for three people into this box plus our two S&S backpack cases. We also took along two maximum-legal-size carry ons.

As those of you with a Cabrio know, the center section is too big to fit in a standard S&S 26x26x10 airline-legal case. After some hours messing around in the garage, I managed to build a crate that fits the center section in a box that has overall dimensions that fit within the 62" limit for no-charge airline checked baggage. The box and its contents easily fell within the 50 pound weight limit, too.

I cut down a free cardboard box from my LBS to use as the outside "skin" for the crate. The wood frame easily disassembled with a screwdriver at our destination, and the pieces nestled into our S&S backpack case for storage.

When I get the chance I'll post exact dimensions and details of construction, but figured I'd post some photos now in case they can help people who might have the same challenge.

(If you are logged into the forum, just click thumbnails to enlarge the photos. If not, click on the highlighted file names below to open the four images.)

specbill

Nice, nice work....

Bill J.

Philly Tandem

Thanks! It took way more time than I should have spent trying to get it to fit within the 62" limit. So, I hope someone else can get some use out of my trial-and-error work

Philly Tandem

Thought I'd add an update to this thread: we have now flown with this crate and S&S backpacks setup to Europe from the USA and back three times, with no issues at all. Below is a photo of our complete major baggage for three people (me, my wife, my 9 year old son) for a 20-day trip including a self-supported (B&B) tour along the Danube. The duffle bag and blue backpack were carry-ons, and we also had two other small carry-ons. Upon arrive at Munich we assembled the bike and condensed all the bags and box down into one of the S&S cases, which our hotel stored for us until the end of the trip. The Cabrio case is the cardboard box on the bottom.



And here's a photo of the bike as setup for the tour, as a reference.

Pic

Nice job.
I guess that's what you call thinking inside the box?