Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Avoiding airline surcharges




In their bid to increase their bottom line, more and more airlines are introducing all sorts of charges to make up for cut throat competition. Air Asia is no exception, and recently charges US$13 one way for sports equipment. Strangely, these are limited to only golf bags, surf boards and bicycles.


So it will be interesting to see if our foldies are going to get hit with their sports equipment surcharge. I can imagine with the huge bike box, it would involve some "extra" labour as well as take up more space in the precious airline cargo hold, but our foldies are barely bigger than a huge suitcase.

My tikit is travelling snugly in its original Bike Friday box while Le Cuppa will be in its special home-home Ikea bag stuffed with cardbox. As far as I'm concern, these are spare parts and not a "bicycle" per se. Lets see if we can escape the surcharge tomorrow...
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*Special thanks to Joseph from CycleMax of Bukit Batok Central who never fails to help me out so faithfully with my biking needs in Singapore. Friendly, humble and skilled.
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2 comments:

soc10 said...

When traveling from Melbourne I always take a conventional bike but it's getting harder to meet the weight limitations, especially when taking camping gear but I meet the limitations when doing short tours. Qantas allows, 23kg checked and 7kg in the cabin. On a long tour in Australia I need to send equipment via surface mail to a forwarding address or pay $10 for every Kilogram above the allowance.

I can see that when I start traveling abroad in a few years time I'll need to use a lightweight folding bike, the writing is on the wall in terms of baggage allowance.

Oldyonfoldy said...

Indeed, we managed to check in at a whisker under 15kg. All but one of us made it without surcharges. I'm convinced that foldies are the way to go, in terms of packing size.

Thanks for your input soc10. Appreciate it!