Flying with your bike this summer?

[Joan]

[Regulator]

Not defending the airport at all but, looking at those pictures, you do wonder if the bike was packed properly (e.g. handlebars turned and seatpost dropped).

I'm flying out to Warsaw with the Brompton in a couple of weeks. Boudicca will be going into an Ikea Dimpa bag, with a bit of additional padding. She's fairly robust and used to getting knocked about on trains.

We had problems when we flew out to Malta a few years ago with bikes, but that was down to the baggage handlers at Heathrow ( the ones in Malta were great).

[LowlifeDes]

Along with three members of The Fridays, I recently flew Heathrow to Basel with BA. We had our bikes in cardboard boxes from bike shops, wheels out and tyres flat, handlebars turned, cross braces in dropouts, pedals off, etc. All four were delivered undamaged, the airport had a dedicated place to leave the boxes, and provided a tyre inflator.
I was highly aprehensive beforehand and highly relieved after.

[Rutabaga]

I know someone who had been taking his carbon bike to Majorca for training camps every year, until the frame got broken in transit (on the way out, even more unfortunately). After that he never travelled a bike on an airline again.