Tourist in MSN

Yup, have done that a few times. It is nice to be able to ride at any pace you want without having to make sure you arrive at the end point on time for a flight.

When I rode Pacific Coast, I checked about four or five days before our tentative end point what the train prices were. If we delayed our departure from San Fransico (is it Emoryville station?) by one day, the savings were enough to cover an extra day of expenses in San Fransisco, so we did sightseeing for free for an extra day.

nun

I ended up with my lightweight setup of a Carradice Camper saddlebag and an Ortlieb Classic Handlebar bag to make riding my bike pleasant and carrying it up motel stairs easy and also to make travel on trains and planes easy. I have just two bags and so on trains they are easy to carry on. I've also managed carry on on planes as the saddle bag fits under a seat or in the overhead easily and my Ortlieb is my "handbag". You have to be careful about knives and cooking fuel though. When I fly I either ship the bike separately or use a soft sided case. I've used the Groundeffect Tardis on a flight to London, but for my last planned trip I wanted a bit more protection so I upgraded to the Post Carry Transfer Case. It looks like a nice bag and fits all my stuff but I didn't get to use it last year... the bag is 12lbs, my bike is 21lbs and I use clothing and my saddle bag as extra padding so the total comes to around 40lbs and I'll be carrying on around 10lbs in my Ortlieb as hand luggage. Keeping my bike and gear relatively light and using just two bags makes life simpler.

Doug64

We usually box our bikes and take them with us when flying. We use the same setup on trains if they require boxes. Our empty panniers go in the box, That makes it easy for the
TSA folks to inspect. All the contents from our panniers go in two light weight duffle bags. No one has ever questioned the empty panniers in the bike boxes.

This is for a train trip, but it is the exact same set up for flying. We check the duffles when flying, but carry them onto the trains.


The TSA guy just pulled the one loose pannier out; it is our insulated " food and drinks" pannier, and is semi rigid. He did not remove anything else to inspect the box. We have always started our "flying tours" from Portland, and I usually talk to the guy as he does his job. All the TSA folks I've interacted with have been great. One guy said he'd do a better job of taping the box back up than I did, and he did

nun

I like bike boxes too, but I'm always scared that I won't be able to get one at the airport and getting one to the airport is a pain. I like using them on Amtrak and call ahead to make sure they have boxes. Here is my stuff at Buffalo station after riding from Boston to Niagara Falls via the Erie Canal. I removed the bars and simply pushed the bike into the box and then carried my bags onto the train. The box was $15 and the baggage fee for the bike was $10.

staehpj1 

That is one reason that while my bike flies with me to my tours, I usually stop by a bike shop and let them box it up and ship it home if I am flying home. At the end of a long tour in a strange town I am ready to be shed of that task. Most of the time the combined cost of the packing and shipping has been $100 or so and I always felt like it was worth it at that point.

Yes, the Amtrak boxes are great! Rotate the bars, remove the pedals and roll it in. Remember to bring your own tape!

Tourist in MSN

You are lucky to see the TSA people. Only twice have I seen where my baggage went after ticketing, usually my stuff is put on a conveyor belt to some mysterious place where you never know what happens.

nun

That's what I've done in the US because the shipping isn't that expensive. Internationally it gets very expensive and I've put my bike in a bike bag and checked it as baggage. The trick with that is to have somewhere to store the case after you arrive, but hotels are ok with that if you are doing a circular tour.


Yes, the bike box in Buffalo was the first time that I used my emergency Duct Tape

staehpj1 

I have only toured in the US so I have no experience with that. I am curious though...

Some years back I loaned a friend my folding bike and she took it to Europe for a year (she had a teaching gig in Spain). I think the baggage charges she paid made it sound to me as if she'd have been better off just buying a bike there. I have also heard folks say their bikes flew for free on international flights. What have you generally paid? Have you managed to get reasonable baggage fees.

Just for fun I did a quote on bikeflights.com from my house to a random hotel in London for a medium sized bike box. It looked like:
Shipping$365.95
Duties, Taxes & Fees $99.00 (Why duties and fees, are they treating it like an import and adding VAT?)
Subtotal (USD)$464.94

So after paying a bike shop maybe another $60 to box it up and have it ready for pick up you'd be well over $500. Expensive, but maybe not completely out of the question depending on how much cost/trouble it was to fly with it on an international flight.

staehpj1 

Yeah, I am surprised that folks seem to regularly interact with the TSA regarding their baggage. Almost everywhere I have flow baggage disappears and the inspection is somewhere out of sight. I have never seen the checked baggage inspection when on tour and only rarely when not. The times I have were in small open air tropical airports (Hawaii and the Dominican Republic), but again I wasn't touring at the time and didn't have a bike along at the time.

Maybe their home terminal is a tiny small town one or something? My home town terminal is pretty small these days and it is still the same. Baggage just disappears before inspections and is never seen again until destination unless I spot it getting loaded onto the plane.

indyfabz

Yeah. BITD I stored my reusable bike box at a campground in Sevilla for 7 weeks during a loop tour. The place had a large, indoor storage space. Almost like a garage. When I went in to stash the box I saw lots of stuff that looked like it had been abandoned. There was even an old, dusty folding bike.

Thanks to the new baggage cars Amtrak purchased, the need to box bikes had diminished on many routes.

Tourist in MSN

My Iceland trip in 2016 on Delta, my first checked bag was free. My second checked bag (my S&S Backpack case) was $100 each way. I do not recall exactly what the oversize fee would have been for a bike box, it was either $100 or $150 each way. But I think that Delta no longer gives you a free first checked bag for international. If I took Iceland Air instead, I would have had two free checked bags but the total ticket cost would have been more. And more importantly, I live in a small community and I could get on a Delta plane in my community but I could not connect to Iceland Air from my home.

I flew to Canada in 2019, but the international fees for Canada are a less than to Europe, so not worth detailing here. It was not much different than domestic fees.

When I was in Iceland, I met a couple that had Ritchey Break Away bikes and they were using bikepacking gear, they probably were packed about as light as you travel. They were from Salt Lake City, I do not recall which airline they flew but they said they each had one checked bag (no oversize fee for their Break Away bike case) and their carry on luggage. I think they put a lot of camping gear with their bikes to get the weight in the bike cases up to nearly 50 pounds. I forgot to ask about storage for their cases.


Iceland, I stored my S&S case in the luggage room at the hostel, I chose to save the money and store it in the regular luggage room where others staying at the hostel had access. To have the hostel store it in a locked room would have cost somewhere between $50 and $100 (I do not recall what the quoted cost was). Nobody stole the case so the free storage worked out well.

Canada, before I flew there I asked at the hostel if I could store it there, I gave the detailed dimensions to them and they said absolutely not, they explained that their luggage room was too small. I arranged to store it at a bike shop. But when I was at the hostel they said that the case was so small, they would be happy to store it for the five weeks I was touring, apparently the manager saw my e-mail question "store my bike case" and automatically denied it without reading the dimensions. Although I did not store it at the bike shop, I went over there to thank them for the offer, spent about $150 CAD there (souvenir jersey, new helmet) to show my appreciation for their offer to help.

Both these trips I stored my other soft luggage in my S&S case, photo below, it is about 2 inches thick with side panels removed, 26 X 26 inches wide and high. Normally this case can be collapsed much more but I put two Coroplast sheets in it that are 26 by 26 to give it more structure. I would prefer not to crease or fold those Coroplast sheets but if I had to I could, once creased they would still retain some of their structure.

Doug64

We have not ridden any loops in Europe. Our tours have all been open jaw, so bike cases would be a problem. We have flown Iceland Air on all our trips, and depending on the year the cost was $100-$150 per bike.

My wife's bike has S&S couplers, but by the time I take the racks and fenders off, remove the tires (700C), and other disassmbly to fit it in a 26"x26" is not worth the hassle for me. Then packing the racks and fenders in another piece of baggage is an issue.

Where her couplers paid off is shipping our bikes domestically either home after a tour or to the start. There is a FedEx box size that, if not exceed, costs about $100 less than a regular recycled bike shop box.

nun

I used the Tardis bike bag on my Iceland trip and I booked the Reykjavik Airport hotel at the beginning and end of the trip. The front desk took my bag and kept it until I returned at no charge

nun

I've flown to London and Reykjavik with my bike on BA and IcelandAir respectively. I didn't pay anything for baggage as I stayed inside the 23kg/50lb checked baggage limit and had just one carry on. My bike, saddlebag and most of my gear went into the bike bag and went on as checked baggage and weighed around 35lbs and I carried my Ortlieb on as hand baggage. A year ago I was planning another UK trip and looked at Bikeflights to the UK and it was really expensive.

mev

I had that happen once as well as a near miss or two.

The time it happened I was flying from Portland Oregon to Bangalore via Seattle and Frankfort. The international flights on Lufthansa let me fly without a box and so the connector from Portland to Seattle was willing to as well. I used basic baggage tape, took off the pedals. I think I also taped/zip tied a wheel to the frame and put the seat in my bag as well but that was a little while ago so don't remember 100%. The bike survived the three hop flight without issue. I was going to work from Bangalore for six weeks so didn't have full touring gear and at end of that trip I left the bike behind with friends in India. I used it on visits in subsequent years and eventually brought it back ~4 years later.

When I brought it back, I also didn't use a box. Instead I tried an experiment with help of people that have one of those plastic wrap for suitcases setups. We obviously couldn't spin it on the device, but with appropriate fee, the personnel were willing to try multiple layers of plastic wrap around the combined contraption. The personnel thought it was great fun and more interesting than their typical suitcase job. It was a bit of mixed success. The bike wasn't damaged, but plastic wrap was definitely a lot more frazzled after the trip.


The near misses happened flying out of Denver when my designated airline didn't have a box. I was however able to get a box from neighboring airline. Once a United box for a Delta flight and a different time an Air Alaska box for a United flight that I recall.

Tourist in MSN

I think I forgot to mention this above, I usually suggest that people make sure that their pedals are not so tight that they can actually remove them a few days before they will have to actually remove them. Bike shops sometimes put them on really tight and pedals can seat themselves even tighter onto the crank arms. If you can't get them off, it is best to learn that a few days in advance so you have time to deal with it.

indyfabz

+1. When I packed my own bike before I had a true pedal wrench I would have a shop “crack” the pedals a couple of days before packing.

boomhauer

I've always marveled at these machines when going outside the US. I had no idea people cared so much about scratched luggage.

stevepusser

Depends on if any shop has a bike you like in the area...they're really short on stock right now.