I’ve travelled with a bike a fair bit and I thought I had an understanding of how it worked. We’ve got a variety of options in our article about the best bike bags but my understanding was that there was a fairly basic arms race happening. On one side was the whole infrastructure involved in flying, in which at each step of the journey, someone was attempting to move your bike bag as quickly as possible with as little effort as possible and couldn’t care much for the bike itself inside. On the other side, there was a whole industry of brands always looking for new ways to mitigate against damage by packaging bikes safely but also conveniently.
In the middle of these two sides is you and your bike. You care deeply about your bike but you also have to make real-world decisions. Airlines have gotten stricter about weight restrictions and bikes have gotten more integrated and harder to pack. Your itinerary once landing might also dictate your choice of bike bag. The bottom line though, there are reasons you might choose to fly with one bag vs another and the absolute best protection isn’t always the deciding factor.
Unfortunately, no matter the bike bag you choose, sometimes things happen and you end up with a broken bike. Earlier this year, that happened to me.
I expected I’d then turn to the airline and eventually it would work itself out, but it turns out there is far more nuance in this part of the transaction than I understood. Much of this is out of your control and that’s frustrating but there are also choices you can make, both ahead of time and in the event of an issue, that can stack the odds in your favour.
Every part of the world has unique airlines and unique rules. As someone who flies most often in the United States, that’s where I focused my investigation. If you are flying outside of the US then you will want to check your local government and the details provided by the airline you are flying. The rules will be different.
Airlines and the ‘Contract of Carriage’
The crux of what we are discussing is what happens when your bike experiences damage during a flight. Bikes are luggage and when you hand your luggage to an airline, that airline is taking over the liability. If the airline loses or damages your luggage there is an expectation of…
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