Packing our bikes for air travel
With only four full days left before we fly out its time for packing our bikes for air travel. This is our first ever bike tour and the first time we’ve ever had to pack bicycles into boxes. We’re flying with Qatar Airways from Dublin to Auckland. In an ideal world we’d start our bike tour from home, but as first time bike tourers, we’re not brave, or crazy, enough to ride the 150 miles from Portrush to Dublin in mid-November! Plus the logistics of packing boxes at the airport is too much to think about for us first-timers.
So today has been spent dismantling the bikes, deflating tyres, taping, tying, weighing, and packing to fit everything in and keep within the weight allowance.
Weight Allowance
One of the reasons we have chosen to fly with Qatar Airways is the fact they offer a 30kg per person luggage allowance with no limit on the number of pieces. The bike boxes are accepted as part of that luggage allowance, not an additional charge as with so many other airlines we looked at.
The hand luggage allowance is one piece at no more than 7kg per person.
Another reason to go with Qatar was the ability to fly direct from Dublin to Auckland with only one connection in Doha which should minimise the amount of baggage handling.
Bike Boxes
We are using standard cardboard bike boxes from our local bike shop. To fit each bike in a box we have removed the pedals, the wheels, and the seat post and saddle. We deflated the tyres. We’ve turned the handlebars sideways. We covered the main tubes of the bike frames with foam pipe lagging to protect them in transit, and bubble wrapped the pedals and seat. We filled the bike boxes up with our panniers (the two large ones), front racks, helmets, bike shoes, locks, tool kit and camping gear to act as padding to minimise movement and damage in transit.
The boxes are weighing in at about 23kg each.
Worldwide shopping bags (WWSB)
In addition to the bike boxes we have what we call a “worldwide shopping bag” each. You know the blue/red/white checked bags you find at every market worldwide, that’s what we’re talking about! They will go as part of our 30kg checked luggage allowance.
In these bags we’ve packed the smaller panniers, our handlebar bags, our biking clothes and the camping kitchen (pots & pans, plates, cups, cutlery), plus the all important luxury of the trip – collapsable wine glasses!
They’re weighing in at about 5kg each.
Hand luggage
We’re using our eBags for our running gear and clothes that we need for the non-biking part of this trip. We’ll be leaving the bikes in Auckland on arrival, then spending the first couple of weeks of this trip in Queenstown before returning to Auckland to start the bike tour. We can leave our hand luggage, empty bike boxes and the WWSBs with a friend in Auckland while we’re on the bike tour.
Packed & ready
That’s the packing of our bikes for air travel done. We think we’ve kept under the 30kg limit, but its pretty close, fingers crossed we’ll get it all through as it would be an absolute nightmare to have to repack in the middle of Dublin airport.
Sunday morning will be the final session of taping, and if possible we’ll get the WWSB’s security wrapped at the airport.
Departure day is up next!
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