BigFinner

I apologize if this has been discussed before but I searched and could not find much on it.

Essentially this thread is all about peoples experience and advice on the best way to pack a bike for air travel!

I'll start it off:

So I have cycle toured all the Hawaiian Islands, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore Vancouver Island, San Juan Island, Gulf Islands and I think a few other trips I currently can't recall. These have been over many multiple trips and most of them involved air travel.

First ever cycle touring trip for me was Maui. I used a hard shell clam shell case and experienced damage. From what I was able to figure out baggage handlers dragged the case along the tarmac and somehow my large ring popped out of the shell and ground the cogs flat on it.

Second trip Kauai, Maui, Molokai, Lanai and I used a bike box for the long international flights. Again I faced damage, this time on the trip home. From what I could tell from the look of the bike box after the flight the baggage handlers must have figured my bike box was the best thing to stack every other piece of baggage on top of! HA! However on this trip as I took quite a few short small plane inter-island flights. These small airlines gave me thin clear plastic bags for my bike. Surprisingly enough this worked without a hitch.

After I got home from that last trip with the bike box damage it got me to thinking about the clear plastic bag method of flying a bike. So the next trip I took i stopped by a big furniture store and picked up 2 clear twin mattress bags. These bags are thick, sturdy and clear. I got one for the trip there and one to stay clean and folded neat to pack with my stuff for the flight home. I purchased some bubble wrap. Removed my rear derailleur, taped it between my rear triangle and then spun my bars taping them to the frame, removed the pedals, taped bubble wrap in key sensitive locations, as well as the wheels which were off and taped to the side of the bike and then placed nutted ready rod between the front and rear dropouts just in case of crushing. Well that trip went flawless. I have since followed this method for every trip I have made (Minimum 20 flights since then) and never had 1 single issue with this method. From what I can tell it's like baggage handlers pick it up and because it's light and they can see it's a bike they decide "Hey this is a fragile bike I should lift it up and place it at the top of any other baggage".

Now I am sure others have horror stories or will tell me my method is crazy but at this point it has worked very well for me. I would love to hear everyone else's method and advice on this as for me the flights and fear of the holiday being messed up by discovering a destroyed bike upon landing is often the most stressful part of the trip!

Cheers
Daren

kevrider

i have nothing to contribute, just here to learn.

alan s 

S&S coupled bike goes in a suitcase. Never had an issue. Carefully packed and lots of pads and stiffeners. Also, almost completely disassembled, which is a bit of a pain. Components go on board with me, such as brakes, rotors and shifters.

djb

you pay your money and you take your chances.

glad the bag system worked out, Ive generally had good experiences with cardboard, although I am sure its part luck and part good packing.

jefnvk

Tried the plastic bag on my flight home last trip. Small sample size of success, but I'm hooked!

tspoon

I used a soft case, and my bike is a Montague folding type. Everything got pretty scratched, but not damaged as such (except for one brake disc recently). If you love your bike, or if your bike is a thing of beauty, protecting the paint job with pipe insulation seems to be the go-to solution. I took my pretty bike to Japan with this method, it worked quite well. Of course you need to either have a base (I did) or carry the insulation with you (inconvenient), or source some at your departure city (possibly tricky).

downtube42

Big-ass cardboard box for my recumbent. A pain schlepping around the airports, but I've been to France and back twice with no bike issues. The first box was pretty much destroyed by the end of the trip though.

Rowan

For my full-size bikes, I have always used the cardboard boxes supplied by the airlines here in Australia.

However, my entire protection procedures took a major leap forward when I thought about how alot of stuff comes with cling-wrap/saran wrap, kitchen wrap around it. I experimented (mainly packing up household stuff for major interstate moves), and it works very well.

So now I remove the front wheel and handlebars (road bikes) and pedals and seatpost with seat, wrap the frame in plastic, several times over, then the handlebars, then the front wheel so the final run on it is over the frame. The seat and other stuff wrap separately.

The beauty is that it keeps the bike (and front wheel) together so it can be lifted as a unit out of a box by security personnel, and it's largely see-through. It also protects the finish of all components. The only padding used is cardboard for the front-wheel axle, and around the teeth of the outer chainring.

I've used the same technique for our Bike Fridays, and it's even more important because they have to be broken down into more basic components to fit in suitcases, so the wrap keeps almost everything tightly together.

I have pictures somewhere from our most recent trip to Canada. I will see if I can find and post them.

BigFinner

Cool this sounds like a really interesting method. I would love to see pics. BTW where did you cycle in Canada and how did you like it?

Rowan

OK, here are some pictures:

The first shows what I mean about lifting the bike and front wheel together, and how the plastic is somewhat transparent to see what's underneath.

The second shows how the plastic wrap can be used as "string" to tie the front-wheel skewer to a spoke on the wheel.

The third shows the front wheel wrapped in plastic, capturing a piece of cardboard covering the end of the axle (same on the other side).

The seat/seatpost is wrapped in plastic, too, along with a variety of other inclusions such as the Carradice.

And, Machka is my wife... she is Canadian (as well as Australian) as we visit her family in BC regularly -- this last one included Vancouver Island, and areas around Chilliwack to the east of Vancouver city. Pictures taken in her father's garage.

Rowan

Airline cardboard boxes come in various levels of quality. The first picture shows a Qantas box from 2005 after it arrived in LA in not-so-good-condition. On the other hand, we have had a couple of boxes we acquired at the Heathrow Airport luggage centre (it's a bit hard to describe what they were, but they weren't aligned with any particular airline). These boxes have served us extremely well because they have been heavier-duty construction.

The second picture in this post shows how we now transport our boxes on luggage trolleys at the airports... on their ends. Previously, they were laid horizontally across the trolley, which was fine for seeing where we were going, but not so good for negotiating crowds and through doorways.

Packing the bikes with the kitchen wrap, and providing a little bit of padding with panniers/bags to the weight limit means putting the boxes on end isn't such a problem for the contents. In fact, keeping the frame and other stuff together means if there is any movement, they aren't rubbing against each other.

djb

To anyone reading this for packing ideas, to me the most important thing to keep in mind is what Rowan started, assume that there will be bangs and rough treatment, so reduce movement of parts and cushion where it's logical that x will get pressed or banged up against y.

saddlesores

fewerer and fewerer airlines are accepting bikes in a bag.
............so it's a box or the highway.

i wouldn't wanna chance showing up at an airport without
a box and risk being denied carriage. easy enough to find
or build a box just about anywhere they have aeroplanes.

and you get to pad your bike as carefully as you like.
don't assume baggage handlers will take extra special care
of your bike cause it's in plastic. if they've had a bad day,
anything fragile looking is a magnet for "the treatment."

staehpj1

I have not heard that. Do you only mean plastic bags or have soft cases been turned away?

My personal experience is with cardboard boxes and with soft cases and I have had generally good luck with both.

I almost never start and end a tour in the same city so a hard case is difficult to manage with the need to ship ahead to the tour destination. I really like to be able to just ride out of the airport and a hard case is a problem for that as well.

A soft case has some of that same issues, but is easier to deal with since it can be carried along for a while and is cheaper/easier to ship. I typically use cardboard and clothing/gear to pad the bike when using a soft case. Since I pack ultralight, I can actually get my bike and all gear in the soft case and still make the airline's weight limit. Since I usually carry on a small backpack I can put a little bit of gear in that if I want or need to.

That said, my most common approach is to use a cardboard box as checked baggage to get my bike to my trip starting point and to have a bike shop pack and ship it home for the return trip. I could fly home with the bike, but usually don't want to bother with the packing and schlepping in a strange city at the end of a tour. Usually the packing and shipping home have added up to about $100 for the return trip. To me that is a small price to not have to deal with the bike once at my destination.

BTW, I never put gear or clothing in the cardboard box with the bike. I often use thrift store suitcases ($5-7) to get my gear to a trip and discard them when I get there. For the trip home I sometimes buy a big Protege duffle bag. the big 32" long one is about $17 at walmart. It has wheels, holds all my gear, is cheap, and is easy to manage.

Even when using the soft case I am likely to pay a bike shop to pack and ship the bike home, so the case is usually a one way thing.

kevrider

i like the concept of your approach, but it sounds fairly specific for US domestic travel. seems like some of the return/destination procedure would be a trick overseas, especially in some of the non-Western countries...

staehpj1

Yes, my touring experience is all with domestic US travel, so some of it may not be as applicable to travel outside the US.

Tourist in MSN

Rowan, do you still travel with full size bikes? I thought you and Machka bought Bike Fridays for travel.

I have only traveled with my S&S backpack case. Both times there were large wear spots on the case where I think airline personnel dragged the case (as if it had wheels, which it does not) on rough concrete until the nylon was completely worn through. After getting home I had to glue new nylon patches onto the case.

My S&S bike has a Rohloff, thus no derailleurs or derailleur hangers. But I have seen in the past suggestions that the rear derailleur be removed from a bike before trusting it with airline personnel. If I boxed up a derailleur bike, I would do that to reduce the chance of a derailleur hanger being broken or bent.

When I worked at a bike shop, when we received new bikes they had the front wheel tied to the frame very similar to the way Rowan did. They used different materials (not plastic wrap), but the wheel was lashed to the frame in almost the same exact spot. That is the way I would do it.

I had to tweak my wheel truing after reassembling my S&S bike. Spoke wrench came in handy.

Note the way Rowan took his front skewer out of the wheel. Last summer I met a couple guys in a campground that were re-assembling their bikes after airline travel, both had bent front skewers from bad packing.

A luggage scale is your best friend. I have carried pedals in a carry on to get my S&S case under 50 pounds. The black case in the photo is the S&S case. The rack would not fit in it with the bike. I packed the rack, saddle and a few other parts in the olive green case that was also checked. I wore the bike helmet onto the plane to make sure it did not get damaged, only one airplane employee commented on that. He said, planes are pretty safe these days. The yellow duffel and handlebar bag were carried onto the plane.

BigFinner

I like this idea. Next time I might do a combo of this wrap and the mattress bags. The mattress bags are so thick that they seem to protect a bit. I am 6'4", hence ride a big bike and to meet size limitations I often have to remove both front and rear wheels and do what you have done but with both wheels. However I have used electrical tape instead but it makes a bit of a sticky mess so I really like this shrink wrap idea. I have found bubble wrap with packing tape works really well to protect fragile areas as well. The bubble wrap is light and has been pretty easy to find in every country we've been to.

I live in Canada and the last couple years we have cycle toured the gulf islands with the kids. These are the smaller islands between Vancouver and Victoria Island. These islands are beautiful and very friendly to cyclists (slow traffic that is use to bikes, cheap ferry prices for passengers and bikes, steep hills - ugh!). You might want to check them out next time you are over here.

BigFinner

Yes exactly. People should also note that if you like your bike pristine don't fly your bike or for that matter cycle tour. My road bike has thousands of kms on it and looks brand new. My cycle touring bike does not look anything like new. When cycle touring there are just bumps and bangs that inevitably accompany it. I look at it as the bikes story and adventure. Kind of proof of a life well lived for touring bike!

BigFinner

I've flown a LOT of airlines never found a single one that only accepts bikes in boxes. I have found that the bike policy is listed on the website of every airline. Can you provide a link to an airline that has this box only policy as I would like to make sure I steer away from them.


Yes air travel with a bike is a risk. However from multiple experiences I've found the clear bag method to be the safest for me to date.

saddlesores

boxes and soft-side (canvas?) bike bags....ok.
plastic bags and/or saran wrap.....no longer ok.

they've all been tightening....jetstar has just added an oversize
baggage fee.....$18-25....depending on route, if any size > 1m.
but the max length has been increased to 2.0m, good news for
tandems.

air asia changed recently, they say "packed in recognised bicycle
bag or in a protective box or bag or in plastic wrap." that's
confusing!

***about 6(?) years ago, flew bangkok to saigon with air asia, at
that time nothing needed....just remove pedals, turn bars and
roll to the oversize luggage counter. returning from hanoi a month
later, was told new policy and needed a box. managed to talk
my way through as had the printed roll-on policy from before.***

jetstar says "pack your bike in a suitable bike bag or box"
i've seen some turned away, others talked their way past
the agents with cardboard strips and cling-wrap. depends
on who you get, what airport, and your altitude.

BigFinner

Tourist in MSN You have added awesome advice!!!!

This is something I always do. I leave it attached to the cable and chain, unscrew it from the hanger and tape it just above the hanger between the rear triangle. Then I wrap that area of the triangle in bubble wrap. Then when you land it is a pretty quick reassembly.



Yes, I as well put all the bits like this in a pannier or other bag and not packed with the bike.


That is exactly what we do as well except panniers instead of yellow duffel. We have found it to work very well.

mev

Not sure I have a best method, but following is my experience set for trips I've done:

- Over 25 times I've used a standard airline box with pedals removed, seat removed and handlebars turned. Twice I've had a ding/scratch in the frame but nothing more serious.
- 6 times I've flown w/oa box using either plastic bag or nothing (Lufthansa, Hawaiian airlines). A rotor was rubbing once but no damage.
- ~6 times I've flown with a bike boxes packed by a bike shop. Usually includes smaller box, more disassembly and better foam/packing materials. Chain problems once from my clumsy reassembly, but no damage. I've used this option when either I had many flight hops or not sure if a box was available at the airport, e.g. developing world.

With the increase in charges, I've found it to be less common to find boxes in airports than 20 years ago. Lower cost airlines have usually not had them all along. However, last two times I flew out of Denver on Delta/United, neither carrier had a box. Fortunately, in both cases I was able to get one from Alaska Air.

fietsbob

Flying home from Shiphol, AMS airport , I bought a box from KLM desk. riding right up to the airport.


Last time , returning, I had a bike box, made from 2 regular ones, to leave the rack & front wheel on, & pannier rack

and my panniers in heavy duty plastic bags for grain that had been for feeding the chickens..

Aberdeen Scotland to SFO , via AMS.




....

alan s 

What does altitude have to do with it?