Bike Box/ Bag recommendations?

Izoard

Apologies in advance - have been unsuccessfully struggling with the "search thread" feature, as I'm sure this has come up many times already....

Need to acquire a bike box or bag for a July air trip, but am lost with the myriad of options.
Rented a box from CycleSuperStore back in '06, but it seemed overkill for what was required.

Any suggestions on a good bag or box?

tunney

Izoard wrote: »

Apologies in advance - have been unsuccessfully struggling with the "search thread" feature, as I'm sure this has come up many times already....

Need to acquire a bike box or bag for a July air trip, but am lost with the myriad of options.
Rented a box from CycleSuperStore back in '06, but it seemed overkill for what was required.

Any suggestions on a good bag or box?

Bike box allan

blorg

If your bike is steel, aluminium or titanium and is not crazy light/thin tubing I would bring it as is, without a bag/box.

If it is carbon I would use a hard shell case like the one you rented from CSS- I have one of these myself and it is a good one.

Izoard

blorg wrote: »

If your bike is steel, aluminium or titanium and is not crazy light/thin tubing I would bring it as is, without a bag/box.

If it is carbon I would use a hard shell case like the one you rented from CSS- I have one of these myself and it is a good one.

Thanks...Alu frame/ carbon fork. I was thinking a bag might be a good compromise, with appropriate padding around/ between the forks.

redmenace1

I think bike boxes are getting a bit iffy with the airlines as they weigh quite a bit even when empty and if the low-cost airlines charged on their kilo weight limit you'd be in trouble. I know people who got caught on this last year (trans Atlantic) and I got my box weighed in Girona, (before I brought it to oversize) but didn't get hit with extra charge.

So a bike bag is probably better as your frame should be ok. Watch the deraillur and forks though and pack as much padding around it as you can

ROK ON

I have a SciCon bike bag and would recommend it. I brought a carbon frame to France recently. As part of a group of 12 with all others having bike boxes I was the only person that didn't get charged excess baggage.
It is very difficult to get a hardcase under 15/20kg depending on airline.

The airlines are weighing and charging.

blorg

The problem with a bag is that it makes the bike difficult to handle. The baggage handlers feck bikes in bags/boxes around. I have seen them do this and indeed broken many boxes although the contents inside were OK.

If you give them the bike as is they can wheel it around and tend to handle it carefully, from what I have seen of them loading the plane anyway.

My tourer is titanium with a carbon fork and I just cycle to the airport and hand it to them as is- sometimes I will put a bit of pipe lagging on the carbon fork. My carbon and indeed lightweight ti road bikes go in a hard case.

at1withmyself

I have a Polaris Bike Pod, got it in Slane cycles a few years ago and this has been on about 20 flights now and my Carbon bike was un-scratched each time.

http://www.slanecycles.com/polaris-bike-pod-p-608.html

As Blorg says though weight is a pain and this Pod weights 7kg alone so keeping the over-all weight down can be difficult but I'd highly recommend it and will hopefully get another 20 odd flights from mine.

I would avoid the bags altogether as the bike tends 'gather' in a corner of the bag as you carry it and the parts on the bike get badly damaged. Look for something with a some internal straps at leaset to keep components seperate.

ROK ON

On bike bags. The SciCon bag has an internal frame that you atta h the front and rear fork to.
This provides a reasonable secure metal fram around the lower half of the from and the drivechain and deraileurs.

The bag has thick padding. When I used it I wrapped bike in insulation foam as a precaution but it was unnecessary.

As I was boarding the plane I saw them put my bag on. It was last bag on and handled well.

The choice as I see it is (1) complete piece of mind with the box but with the strong possibility of extra baggage fees
Or (2) reasonably secure but could get squashed bag and low liklibood of fees.

Before I bought the bag I did a lot of searches of reviews and couldn't find that many ones that reported damaged frame.
If it was as widespread as perceived I would have expected much more.

blorg

I agree with ROK_ON that a key point here is weight and making sure if getting a bag/box that it is as light as possible. I have this hard case which is pretty light at 9.5kg and very well designed and easy to pack; my previous hard case from Wiggle was 14.5kg. I can get my bike in that under 20kg, especially if I put saddle and seatpost in a separate bag. Under 15kg no way.

@ROK_ON- were you flying Ryanair or Aer Lingus? Up against the 20 or 15kg weight limit? While Ryanair's 20kg bike limit is very clear and they are enforcing it the wording with Aer Lingus is not so clear as to whether 15kg actually applies to bikes; some people have been asked for excess but others have been told by Aer Lingus staff that it doesn't apply to bikes.

ROK ON

Ryanair.

Interestingly staff at Biarritz airport were less interested in the weight than at Dublin. But that was probably due to the chaos re the ashcloud.

The day after I flew from Stansted to Ireland. Ryaniar staff there thought the limit was 15kg and wanted to charge me £100. It took intervention from a supervisor to confirm that weight limit was indeed 20 and that I was just under.
Reality if there was a lot of people heading over to a big European event it maybe worth peoples while to get together on boards and try to het the stuff brought over in a van or dhl etc at a group rate.
Probably cheaper safer and significantly less hassle.

Travelling with a bike is a PITA particularly when there are flight complications.