If you want to fly with your bike it definitely makes sense to book your tickets with a bike friendly airline. Some are very unfriendly in their bike policy. If possible I fly Southwest.
Bikeflights.com and shipbikes.com are reasonable and work well if you want to ship your bike, but when getting to a tour I really like to fly with my bike.
Just unpacking near the baggage carousel and riding out of the airport is nice compared to having to figure out where to ship the bike to and then get there when they are open. If you are staying with someone or in a motel at the start of the trip this may not be as much of an issue. That worked well for me when I was riding with someone near the tour's start. In that case I just had the bike shipped to his house.
At the end of the tour I find the opposite. I really want to just ditch the bike and be baggage light for the trip home. I find that for the trip home I like to be able to just pay a bike shop to pack and ship the bike home for me. The shops get a business rate for the shipping and as a result I usually find the packing and shipping to be about $100 total ($40-60 for packing and $40-60 for the shipping). That has always been for distances of a thousand + miles to a coast to coast trip.
Others have had a shop do the packing and then used shipbikes or bikeflights for the shipping. That may save a few bucks, but I have not done it.
One thing I definitely avoid is walking into a UPS or FedEx store and asking them to ship. When I have done that I was always quoted a VERY high price, always more for just the shipping than the packing AND shipping a bike shop charged. Ditto for the Postman Plus type places.
All my experience is with travel in the continental US.
Last edited by staehpj1; 04-27-17 at 05:16 AM.