Originally Posted by
tulowulo
Pack your bike in a rigid bike case and pack it well. Consider insuring it as well.
Also, check the individual airlines policies on traveling with a bike. For example, from San Francisco to Europe, US Airlines charges $100, Swiss Air $289 and I think I read on an earlier post that British Air doesn't charge anything.
I can't emphasize the rigid case enough though. Last summer I bought a bicycle in Italy for my son who rode it for 5 weeks in the Dolomites with my brother. When we flew home I packed the bike in a soft case according to the instructions given by US Airways and the bike was destroyed beyond repair by the luggage handlers. Our flight was from Venice to Philadelphia and then on to San Francisco. The bicycle arrived in Philadelphia, where we had to declare it for customs, in perfect shape but when it arrived in San Francisco it was destroyed. US Airlines said it would only pay for the damage to the bike bag but after they saw the condition of the bag they agreed there had been abuse and they paid for the bike.
You know, I just don't agree that the rigid case provides that much extra protection, if any. The airlines have a unique ability to damage things because they are using a lot of heavy power equipment. If they back the truck into the dock with your case in between, it isn't going to make any difference at all if your case is hard, soft or made from concrete or anything in between. And that's pretty much what happens when big damage happens. I've had stuff in hard cases damaged in ways that you just can't believe (like the alpine skis that were bent into a 90 degree angle). So the hard cases are no real benefit at all.
I do understand that the "hard" cases make the owner feel better though. And I do think hard cases probably last longer than soft because they handle abrasion better. That said, they are considerably heavier and usually considerably larger. I feel, based on a lot of air miles, that airlines are a lot more sensitive about weight than size. Weight means higher worker's comp costs from potential injury and it means higher cost from fuel expense. We've found that airlines are a lot more forgiving about a somewhat oversized bag than they are about even a slightly overweight one.
The reality is that a bike frame is an incredibly tough and strong structure if you have something in the dropouts to keep the frame from being compressed. If you don't have something in the drop outs, you're deeply at risk in any case - hard or soft - from pressure that's from the sides. So in *any* case, how you pack it into that case matters in a big way.
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Pretty much every case - hard or soft - has panels that are about the same toughness in preventing a point pressure from pushing against the frame. That would be "pressure" in the normal baggage handling sense, of course. If a truck backs into your case, if it falls off the baggage cart and gets run over, if it gets jammed in a conveyer or lift, all bets are off no matter what because those are forces produced by heavy equipment that is designed to move high volumes of tonnage quickly and if it is that force against your case, the case loses and it doesn't matter what the case is made from.
I'll also say that that sort of severe damage is becoming much more rare than it used to be. We've traveled worldwide with both skis and bikes in cases and have had a lot more success than failure (and it's improved over the years). With our current cases, the bikes go through the normal baggage scheme (no special handling required) and that seems to work the best. Where trouble happens, IMHO, is when you get out of that flow and the bag requires special handling and transport. That's when things fall off of trucks, protruding items get smashed into loading docks, and things get run over. Spends some time watching how baggage gets handled at an airport and I think you'll see what I mean. They've had to create baggage handling flows that handle cheap pink "snoopy" bags and a compact bike case is way more robust than that.
I will say this though - almost *any* bike case is better than a cardboard box. That said, thousands maybe millions of bikes are shipped every year in cardboard boxes without incident. That's how they come packaged to your LBS. But every one of those has protectors in the dropouts and caps over the wheel hubs - those pieces definitely make a difference.
We're big fans of our Orucase Airport Ninjas and are considered "soft" cases but which have been flawless in protecting our bikes and which we have yet to ever be charged an airline bike charge which on Delta/KLM is $150 each way. These bags have heavy padding around the circumference of the bag and dual sheets of dense plastic that provide similar structural rigidity to the bag as in a hard case. That's pretty typical in a lot of soft bags too. What's unique about the Orucases is that they are very close to the airline size spec without having to have a frame that has couplers and they are much lighter than most other bike cases. They just happily ride down the conveyors and up into the aircraft without fuss.