Last fall I flew on Frontier to Austin TX with my bike in a hardcase bike box. The cost was $50 each way because it's an automatic oversize, best to stand in the check in line that is for "special luggage". It worked out fine for me but had to wait a little longer to get my bike when it arrived b/c it gets picked up in a special area, it doesn't come out on the regular conveyor belt with the normal luggage.

Does anyone know how much the airlines are charging for the first piece of checked luggage? (this is completely ridiculous by the way...damn airlines).

Call the airline. With all the changes right now, they are just all different. It will help you the most if you speak to someone there, get a name and a date and time of the call, and take that with you to the airport. Some airlines charging all the fees they can on bikes: extra, oversize, special, athletic, and whatever else they can come up with. Some are still just charging their bike price. But it is best to be ready for anything and have what they told you in hand, although they can still argue about it with you.

If you are mailing a bike before a race, it is often a good idea to ship it to a local bike shop, with their permission of course. It's also polite to then have them tune it or put it together or ship it for you afterward -- which brings in a bit of revenue for them.

You can either package and ship it yourself, or have a local bike shop do it.

My preferred version of racing elsewhere with my bike is to have TriBikeTransport do it all for me! :) The only downside to that company is that it doesn't offer service to all races!

Thanks for posting your experiences. The bottom line is that yes, I will (probably) be charged, but I will (probably) be able to travel with the bike box even with the airlines charging fees on every bag. Good. As long as I get there . . .

It's a crap shoot. We did IM Switzerland last year. Some of us got charged on the way out of Minneapolis, some of us didn't. Most of use got charged on the way back. They have strict weight limit rules over there compared to here in the US. Your bag has to weigh less than _?_ sorry I don't remember, besides it was in KG. I think we had to pay 240 EU which ended up being more than what NWA said the fee would be. We filed a complaint and got a minor refund.

For the gate agents its additional work, some do it some don't. I went to Chile in January again left Minneapolis on NWA and didn't get charged flying to Miami. The guy saw my bag and even helped me get it checked in all the way to my final destination on another airline. He saw an IM logo on one of my bags, asked me if I was racing and said good luck. He knew it was a bike and didn't do anything about it. I was very happy to have saved $80. Coming home via Miami I was charged the $80. Sometimes you win some, some times you don't but I think it's going to get tougher from now on...

"Most carriers I have taken, both domestic and international will allow golf clubs free of charge as of 2 months ago, almost regardless of weight, so I recommend you just bring up something about discrimination when it comes to athletic equipment, asking why the fat guy who takes up 2 seats with his 93 lb golf bag gets to check his things free, while you get charged for wanting to be active and in no way taking up more cargo space than anyone else."

I have heard this as well. One of my friends actually told me if I ever ship my bike to put a golfing sticker on the box and show up to the airport wearing a golf hat and it will be no problem, and I will not be charged. But yeah, this is ridiculous if you think about it. Why are golf clubs ok, and bikes aren't?? What if you were shipping... I don't a surfboard. Would that be allowed? It all just shows how stupid airlines are!!

We are leaving tomorrow for the 70.3 in Switzerland. I have called US Airways about this 4 times and gotten at least as many answers. Calling the airline call center doesn't seem to get you very far. Generally I state my question, they tell me to hang on while they look it up on the web page I'm already looking at, and come up with minimal information. One thing about the international flights, though, is that your 2 pieces of luggage are still free, no matter when you bought your ticket.

It's confusing because there are oversize/overweight luggage fees and then there are "special" baggage fees. So far it seems that we'll only have to pay the "special" fee, which according to the website is $80 each way (not each leg), but according to one lady I talked to is $100. When I told her that the website said $80, she said it would be either one of those. When I asked for a firmer amount she said, "OK, it's $100 then." Whatever.

The issue we're facing now is that we're starting with a domestic flight to PHL and then on to ZRH, and that first flight is on a DASH-8, and there is no one at the airline who can tell me whether the bike boxes are too big to go on that plane. No one. Not even via a special secret number I got from a friend who travels a lot. One person berated me for not having booked a larger plane at the outset and how I should have made sure it would all work when I bought the ticket. I can take that point, but I still think it should be possible to get a solid answer to a non-philosophical question. She suggested I send it separately using Cargo services (probably another $1000; right).

So we are just going to show up at the airport and see what happens (it sucks, but the airline industry is the most anti-proactive I've ever seen). If the bikes can't go with us, then we will just have them sent on the next flight out on the larger plane (taking major precautions to make sure they don't just spend two weeks on the tarmac). We're getting there just over a week ahead of time, so we do have a bit of flexibility there.

The only other way you might be able to nail something down would be to stop at the airport with the box (maybe get a friend to take you through the drivethrough) and walk up to the checkin counter and ask the agent whether it can be checked to Frankfurt and for how much extra and is there anything else you need to know. Maybe they'd even give you a "hall pass" attesting to what they told you, or maybe they'd be able to make some notation in the record for when you check in.

If I can, I'll post about how it goes once we're there. I've heard rotten things about US Airways and luggage lately.

I hate flying with my bikes. As soon as I'm done with college and this one time team usa thing, and am staying in one place, I will quit traveling for races. Its too much of a hassle. They recently cracked my new carbon bike. Now I'm stuck with only my old roadie for worlds, a $500 repair bill, and a tough luck from the airline.

If you can manage to pack your case to <50 lbs, then you might be able to avoid an additional overweight charge.

We made it. We'd been worried about the bikes; they made it more easily and earlier than we did. The fee turned out to be $80 each.

We boarded the tiny plane and actually watched the bikes go on, too (which had been the big question). That was right before they pulled us back off because the plane was overwieght (and oversold) and there was too much luggage. We were the "lucky" ones because we didn't check in until we got to the airport, whereas most others had checked in online (of course, if they wanted to lighten the plane, there may have been other, better candidates on that plane than us). Lesson: remember to check in online ahead of time. That was a whole 'nuther story but when the supervisor came the other agents were told that people with int'l connections should basically never be the ones to be bumped. And that mistake cost them some money. They flew us to Boston and put us on Swiss Air (a pretty sweet deal, after all) and we got there about 2 hours later than planned. The cool part was that when we got done with the passport check, our bikes and bags were waiting for us in a tidy little group, so we didn't have to wait at that point. The other cool part is that we now have two free roundtrip tix to anywhere in the US.

We actually put the bikes back together that afternoon before heading out to visit some relatives and everything is present and unscathed. On the way to the train station, we walked through some parts of the run course. After a hugely long night's sleep, we headed out to check out what will become the transition area. There were camels and giraffes there, which was unexpected (there's a small zoo). The area is actually an artificial-turf soccer field. Then we rode maybe 18 or 20 miles of the bike course...mainly to check out the climbs and to make sure the bikes are functional. We made a few adjustments along the way, but everything is working well, and the climbs are totally doable, which is good. The course in general is beautiful. A lot of it is on paved paths that cars can't use, and there are already little M-dot markers on the streets.