jfarwell

hi Folks
In early June, Air France managed to lose one of the cases that were holding our True North titanium tandem. All we have left is the front triangle, the seat-posts and saddles, the rear wheel, the stoker bar, and the fork. Enough time has passed that we are pretty sure we will never see the rest of the bike. If you happen to see a partial frame come up for sale (or just sitting around somewhere), please let me know. I have posted the a photo of the bike below.

On the plus side, we did end up buying a couple of single gravel bikes, so we are re-discovering the joys of riding single. That said, we really miss our big wheel tandem, and plan to have another one built.
Thanks for now
Joe

act0fgod

Ouch. Really sorry for this.

Hopefully you used a card with good lost luggage insurance when purchasing the flight as I've read Air France is terrible with lost luggage claims and the max liability, they'll take without additional insurance is under $2k right?

Have you tried to contact True North and see if they'd be willing to fabricate just the missing half for a discount?

reburns

That’s heartbreaking. Such a beautiful bike. I feel your pain. Lufthansa did the same thing to us back in 2017 when we landed In Berlin during what we discovered was an airport strike. Fortunately we were able to complete our trip on a rented tandem, and the lost half of our bike ended up making it home before we did. I hope your new bike turns out to be the best yet.

jfarwell

Thanks (Act0fgod) it’s a good reminder that airlines have very limited liability, at about 1600 euros under the Montreal convention. We are lucky we live very close to True North, and I am already communicating with them. This fall I’ll bring the remaining bike parts over to the shops and see what they can do. We are leaning toward a full rebuild; the drivetrain has 32,000 kilometers on it, and we were planning on some changes after our France trip.

jfarwell

Thanks (reburns). It’s good to know you got back the missing half of your tandem, and that you were able to rent a bike and salvage the trip. We were lucky to rent singles in Bedoin, and ride the Gorges de la Nesque route a couple of times, did not want to take unfamiliar bikes up Mont Ventoux ( or down it).

scycheng

I have started putting AirTag (or equivalent tags) in all our check-in luggage. Let me track where the luggage is. It should at least be in the same airport as I am. Worked well for flying from Shenzhen to Ottawa with a bike-in-case which involved a ferry, 3 flights and 4 airports.

LV2TNDM

So sorry to hear! Man, that's horrible.

Seconding the above advice, not that it's any help for your lost bike at this point. But for future trips. I put AirTags in our tandem cases last year and sure enough, one bag was misdirected. It was nice seeing the location of our "lost" bag. It made it back to us. However, it was frustrating not being able to determine the condition of our piece of luggage, as we couldn't reach anyone at the airport it was sitting in. So had it been run over by a baggage cart? Fell out of the plane? Turns out it just accidentally went to baggage claim in our layover airport. It was delivered two days later intact.

Were you able to make an insurance claim on the loss? Not much good with a $5-10k deductible, I realize.