Originally Posted by
Tourist in MSN
The person that commented that he used a bag, if I recall correctly, he used a seven speed freewheel bike for touring. It was not very modern.
I am not disagreeing with you, but a lot of us intentionally tour on older equipment that is more robust. My derailleur touring bikes are eight speed, but when I fly with a bike for a bike tour I take my Rohloff bike that has S&S couplers, no hanger to bend. The one time that I flew with a derailleur bike, the derailleur was not attached to the hanger.
Pretty much any bike - robust or not - is no match for the heavy equipment used to rapidly move baggage. When you get outside of that material flow, you’re hoping that someone finds a spot where it won’t get backed into, or that other baggage doesn’t fall on it or that any one of a hundred other things doesn’t happen to it. All one has to do is stand at a gate window and watch all of that happening down on the ramp and imagine a bike on the loose in the middle of that.
so yeah, obviously it’s possible for all to come out ok, but that’s a long odds bet in general. The reason airlines, in the not too distant past (and some still do), had hefty charges for bikes was because they’re a pain in the ass to deal with compared to regular baggage and an aircraft cargo hold is not a hospitable place for a bare bike. Then when one gets damaged it’s a royal pain for the airline to deal with an irate customer.
we all stand a better chance of having airlines be more amenable to low cost bike transport if we take care to fit into their material flow instead of making them spend a lot of extra time and care with our bare bikes. And, for the cost of a bike and the associated vacation, properly packaging your bike is pretty minimal.