Bike boxes and bike packing services at airports

[JC4LAB]

Have you ever come across an airport here in the Uk or abroad where this service is available?..Heathrow Manchester Gatwick,Liverpool etc any where home and abroad inc Eurpoe & USA..Once saw a bike packing service at Manchester one year but it was gone the next,Seen one at Schipol Amsterdam.

Some may just refer you to a nearby Halfords etc.Again if you know of any airports with nearby assistance in packing the bike which aiport is it and who provides the box or packing... ...I only take my easy pack bromptom folder abroad at the moment and would like to take a bigger bike one day..

 

[steveindenmark]

There is an argument for using clear bubble wrap.....if the baggage handlers can see what they are throwing around they are more likely to be nice to it.

I have flown my bikes all over Europe and have never had a problem. The baggage handlers must handle 1000s of bikes every year but you never hear of all the bikes that all arrive safely, only the small percentage that get damaged. The bad behavior of baggage handlers and bikes is a myth that is perpetuated on sites like this.

Mine are transported in a thin cloth bag as I ride from airports and the bag is stuffed in a pannier. It is obviously a bike. I flew back from Pisa and didnt even bother with a bag. That was nice.

I

 

[steveindenmark]

As I said, it is a small percentage and not necessarily caused by bad behaviour. I dont consider myself to be lucky. But maybe I am a bit more fortunate than others who use planes to transport their bikes.

Was your bike in a box?

 

[ColinJ]

Yes and I happened to be looking out of the plane window as it was being man-handled off the plane (which didn't help )

I had my new £2,000 Bianchi in a bike bag, so the baggage handlers definitely knew what it was. I had a cardboard bike box inside the bag, and I had pipe lagging on the frame tubes. I did not want my new bike damaging!

So there I was in a plane at Manchester airport, looking straight down as the baggage hold was being unloaded below me and I suddenly saw my bike bag emerge from the hold in a huge arc, down about 6-8 ft onto a pile of suitcases on the trailer below, bounce off and hit the tarmac. A couple of baggage handlers then picked it up and tossed it back up onto the suitcases.

When I got home, I found that they had dented the seat tube!

 

[ColinJ]

It's not a pleasant experience is it, Colin? Did you manage to get it fixed?

It was NOT a nice feeling! I think my exact words were "Oh, FFS - they have just thrown my bike out of the bloody plane!"

It was only a small dent, but I had only had the bike a couple of weeks so I was not happy! I thought about trying to get compensation but decided that if they refused then It would only make me even more angry so I just fumed for a week or so and then got back to enjoying riding the bike!

I bought a £400 SciCon bike box before my next holiday. Guess what .... after a couple of trouble-free holidays with that, the baggage handlers then broke the box! They dropped it onto one wheel, breaking the corner of the box and jamming the wheel. I had to lift the end of the box to wheel it by the other end. I bent the corner back into shape and used epoxy resin to bond in an aluminium reinforcing plate. I think I have flown another 3 or 4 times with my bike since then.

So, maybe I am unlucky, but despite my best efforts I have had big problems on 2 out of 8 flights!

 

[User269]

Have you ever come across an airport here in the Uk or abroad where this service is available?..

Don't lose hope. Someone here might actually manage to read your post and answer your question.

 

[CopperBrompton]

This is my Bikepod Brompton case after a baggage handler has obviously ignored the standard handle and tried to lift it by pulling out the extending handle, which of course no longer extends.

The good news is that a shoulder strap run through the security straps on top actually serves as a perfectly workable handle for pulling it along.

It did make me glad I'd opted to add some folded up envelope stiffeners to provide some crush-proofing, though.

 

[steveindenmark]

Maybe my secret is that my bag is made out of spinnaker cloth which is quite slippery. Maybe we should start making bike covers out of silk sheets instead of boxes.

I have obviously been very lucky by the sound of things.

 

[Blue Hills]

I think perhaps you have Steve. I have only flown with a bike once - using Ground Effect Tardis and lots of bubble wrap and pipe lagging. All went well. But I have had the looking out the plane window experience. I once saw the baggage handlers pretty much throw/dump a large box which quite clearly contained a telly. So they quite clearly didn't give a f***

 

[Ticktockmy]

Having spent many years working air side at Gatwick airport, not as a Luggage handler I would add, I soon learnt that as far as the luggage handling system works, is that luggage is luggage, and with aircraft turn round times being on average 45 to 90min, the handlers do not really have time to treat any luggage with the care that we would like. Like some on here I have watched bikes being thrown out of the holds like it was the same as any other luggage. For myself I wish that the airlines would go back to the days where you just turned up, took off the pedals, turned the Handle bars round, strapped a bit of padding around the vulnerable parts, I flew my bikes around the world like that for many years, and never had any problems. But i guess that the price of progress

 

[CopperBrompton]

To the guy with the broken pod handle,,Your name isnt Rhod Gilbert by any chance

Nope, but it sounds like this may be a common experience - there's another guy in the London Brompton Club it happened to, and his damage looks almost identical to mine. The saving grace is that the extending handle was stupidly short anyway, so my jury-rigged solution actually works at least as well.

 

[bigjim]

Last year I spent a fair amount of time padding my bike, removing the front wheel and fixing the bag properly with tape outside Beziers airport for my return flight. I suffered a dent in the top tube.
On Friday at Faro airport I left the wheels on and just slung my thin crap £5 bag over the bike, secured the end with some sellatape and checked it in. Large baggage x-ray refused it as it was too big {large frame bike] so I had to take it over to an even larger x-ray. They struggled to manhandle it through the machine but it just fit at an angle. It arrived back in Manchester in one piece with no problems apart from a hole in the bag. I threw the bag in the bin and rode home. Thinking of getting a folder now though.
Faro do have a wrapping facility for large items on one of those turntable things. Costs €16 though.

 

[CopperBrompton]

Perfect excuse to buy a Brompton :-)

 

[bigjim]

Not if you're budget is Dahon.

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[andym]

Researching other stuff I came across some useful links.

I didn't realise that bagwrap.com also sell bike boxes (locations include Heathrow, Stansted, Gatwick, Manchester).

And safebag.com (an Italian company but with a fair number of location outside Italy, mainly in France but also Dublin, Portugal, Ibiza) (info about bikes).

Vienna airport (pdf).

KLM can supply bike boxes, but only at Schipol.