indyfabz

It was United. Flew U.S. Air to Italy last year. $200 each way. I believe they charge the same on domestic flights.

When we did Cycle Oregon a few years ago I flew with the bike because we were on Southwest and it was still $50.

One benefit to shipping is that if you are not riding from the airport, you don't have to schlep your boxed bike around and get ground transportation large enough to take the box. I hard a hard enough time getting a regular cab at MSO.

indyfabz

It was common in the 70s, but not anymore:

stevnim

Brompton's will go in the overhead. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=1&theater

imi

Neat, but I'm not convinced security would always allow it (?)

Rob_E

I have also wanted to fly with my bicycle and looked into trying to do it without paying oversize luggage fees. I can only say what's already been said here: any bike that doesn't fold or split apart will almost certainly end up in the oversize range for any U.S. flight. You can pack it small as possible in an oddly shaped case in hopes of making it work, but the odds are not in your favor, so you'd better have the extra oversize fee available at the airport.

My solution was an old, folding Raleigh Twenty and an old, large, Samsonite suitcase. The suitcase didn't fare too well on the trip out, but the bike came through okay. Problem is that even with my boxed bike squeaking by under the size limit, it still was pretty close to the weight limit. All my other gear had to be split between a 2nd, checked bag and my carry on, so I still had to pay extra luggage fees on the flight that only allowed one, checked bag. But it was not as bad as an oversize charge.

Of course then I had to ride for days on that little bike, which was fine, but it really doesn't compare well to my touring bike in terms of ride quality, but I had a good time. And I do ride that bike around town, too. I try to run a cable through the front and rear wheel, but ultimately, yes, the part where it splits could be a weak point in any locking strategy. So far, though, no one seems to want one half of a 40 year-old bike badly enough to separate it. My understanding of S & S couplers is that they take a very specific tool, so they should be even more secure. But pricey.

Ultimately there's probably going to be an extra charge for flying with a bike. There are ways to minimize that cost, but they generally involve other costs or compromises. Good luck.

spectastic

what about this?


the wheels are a little off - they should take up pretty much the whole box. but for a 58 cm, the head tube to the rear dropouts should be about 39", so it'll fit. that leaves 6 inches, which only leaves enough room for one wheel, if any at all... I'll have to actually put it together to be sure.. should be able to rig something up from a used bike carrier box.

anyone tried this?

Yan 

What you envision has already been done, but for break-apart frames. If you go to the S&S website, you will see that the suitcase they sell is at exactly the airline limit size. The case is basically a square which JUST fits the wheels, exactly the same as what you envision in your diagram and explaination. It takes me half an hour of painstakingly stacking each wheel, frame, and component piece to get the bike inside the case. It's a jigsaw exercise that requires the left side crank and handlebar to be threaded through the spokes of the adjacently sitting wheel.

There is NO WAY a non-breaking 58cm bike will fit into a case that is airline legal. My advice: skip eating out for the next two months and buy an S&S coupling equipped bike. With the money you save on airline charges, you'll make the cost back in just a couple of round trips.

Machka 

Now try it with the actual, real measurements ... and with the rest of the bicycle.

MassiveD

while I certainly don't expect you to get your bike on a plane, as carry on, which is all that really counts... It is a fact that you can carry on guitars, they don't fit in overhead, and you just put them between your legs. Some of the instruments cost like 10K and checking them is out of the question. If we had that kind of pull we might get somewhere, not with a while bike, but in breaking out parts.

The airlines are just ripping people off, they happily rolled up 50 years of gains in the baggage you could carry on due to a coincident security nonsense, and a fuel price hike, that they charged back seven different ways. They need to get some serious push back though cyclists are hardly in the best position.

Tourist in MSN

I have taken a bike on seven different Amtrak trains. I have planned my trips around where there are Amtrak options. I think in total I have paid less for Amtrak boxes and bike fees than I would have had to pay for a one way airline bike fee.



But I anticipate some flights so I got an S&S bike, but have not taken that anywhere yet. The Co Motion website has positive things to say about soft travel cases over hard cases, that is one reason I got the S&S backpack case instead of a hard case.

My S&S bike has 26 inch wheels, it is my understanding that 700c wheels are an extremely tight fit in S&S cases.

I was on an Adventure Cycling group trip a couple years ago. Total of 16 riders, 3 had Bike Fridays, one had S&S couplers, I and two others rode Amtrak - in part for ease of bike transport.

tmac100

This is what I thought when I got my Arvon2 take-apart bike built by Arvon Stacey. It fits into a 20" x 20" x 12" box. Yes, those dimensions are correct. I thought it would be great - and it was until the rear hub (Sturmy Archer 8 speed) broke and there were no parts in Australia. The bike was $3000 custom built and I then postponed the tour until next year and went travelling around Western Australia with the bike and touring gear in the back of a hatch-back Corolla. Some of my travels checked out the route I was supposed to bicycle on, so I now know what the terrain is like and where to wild camp.

Next year I will bring my Arvon1 tourer. I don't trust that rear hub any more - and it was new with maybe 40 km on it. Stuff happens, but imagine - no parts in Australia! I tried with the SA distributor and SA mechanix in Melbourne and Perth. I was not willing to spend another $500+ to fix a brand new bike with a buggered wheel. Better to bring back another bike (next year) that I know works well - but is a bear to ship from overseas (Qatar) where I now am.

spinnaker

In what country?

spinnaker

Unless you bicycle is 2 dimensional or at least the packed width is 6 inches or less, you are over.

staehpj1

Agreed. My rear dropouts are over that dimension. The shortest dimension of the bars and the rear hub might each be over that and stacking it all together in a case or bag would certainly be.

On the notion of carrying on a bike, I have to wonder if the OP is pulling our collective legs or just hasn't really thought this through. The overhead compartments I have seen wouldn't fit a typical bike wheel, let alone the rest of the bike..

Flying domestic US flights, pick your airline based on their bicycle policy. Frontier and Southwest have been pretty bike friendly in the past when I used them. I drove to my last couple trips so it has been a while since I checked, but their rates were reasonable when I used them.

nun

This has worked for me on transatlantic flights....no extra charges, the bike and most of my gear fit into the bag and they go on as regular luggage. I use my gear for padding. I'm not sure how it would work on US domestic flights though.

Ground Effect Tardis - YouTube

imi

Nope. This is the way we used to do it. Bob was right, the times have been a changing

FKMTB07

62" is pretty dang small when you actually look at a bag that size.

I ride my S&S bike every day -- it is my commuter/city bike as well as my touring/travel bike (S&S couplers are expensive and it feels wasteful to just have an S&S bike sit in the garage most of the year). I fly with it as checked baggage in the S&S semi-hard backpack travel case. It's exactly 62", and comes close to the 50lbs weight limit a lot of airlines impose, depending on what else I pack in the case with the bike.

I'm not really worried about someone decoupling the frame to steal it, since:
a.) I use the "Sheldon Method" of locking the rear wheel to the rack inside of the rear triangle, so if someone was able to decouple the frame, they'd have an essentially useless front half of the bike. Of course, all of this leaves the components vulnerable to theft, but this is no different than a standard bike frame locked in this method, and I take appropriate measures to prevent component theft on all my city bikes.
b.) Without the S&S wrench, the frame couplers are SUPER hard to take apart. I suppose with a similar spanner, like a fixed gear lockring spanner, or certainly a pipe wrench, the bike could be decoupled without the S&S wrench, but I doubt many bike thieves carry those tools, and besides, see "a.)".

So in other words, if you an afford a travel bike, and you really do intend to actually travel with it (the cost differential is typically paid off in several trips with the travel bike compared to paying the 50-200 dollars per trip for oversize bike boxes), I wouldn't be too worried about using it every day.

Oh, and for reference, my S&S bike is a Surly Trucker Deluxe. The Surly S&S frames are probably the best deal for a travel frame out there.

bransom

Article by a guy who travels extensively for work and often takes his bike:

Biospeed Aerus Bike Case Review: How I travel with my bike | DC Rainmaker

Philly Tandem

In the past few months, I've taken my S&S triplet to Europe and my S&S single cross-country from PA to CA. In the case of triple, no way we would have gotten that on a plane without the couplers, or if we did, it would have cost a fortune as air freight. For the California trip, I brought it along on whim on a family trip to visit my sister-in-law in Carmel. We were only there for five days, but it was great to be have it and do early morning rides along the Pacific Coast Highway and whatnot (see photo below).

You can mitigate the S&S premium by looking for used bikes. They aren't terribly common, but they do come up. I've found and bought a number of nice S&S bikes over the years at significant discounts off the new prices, including a Co-Motion Nor'wester and an older Co-Motion 26"-wheeled frame that I built up into a nice rail-trail tourer (photo below on the GAP trail).

fietsbob

Bike Friday designed their Travel bikes around 20" wheels to make it's fold and Knock down combination fit in a Suitcase .

Very hard to make a Bike fit in a Case smaller than It's wheels ..

tmac100

Cute staged picture. Obviously not at the boarding gate nor on board an A320 or B737