One day one photo - 28: Bikes on flights headache

Although I have cycled abroad in recent years I tend to take my bike onto a aeroplanes less and less. Taking your bike onto a flight has become increasingly expensive. My flight top Nice cost £80, and then I paid a further £80 to transport the bicycle! Furthermore, there's always the worry over whether or not the airline company will get your bike to your destination without any damage, plus there's also the headache of transporting the bike cross-country if your start point and your destination are far from the airport.
Sometimes there's a worry about whether the bike will arrive at your destination at all!

In recent years I have tried to mitigate against these annoyances by hiring a bike where possible. Sometimes it can work out cheaper than taking my own bike, and the bikes on hire can even be a higher spec than any of the bikes I have at home.

Last year I travelled to Alicante and Costa Blanca area of Spain, and hired from a shop in El Campello. When in the Milan/Lake Como area of Italy I have hired from a company based in Cernobbio, and of course that Mecca for cycling, Mallorca, has no end of places that will hire out road bikes.

Today I flew to Nice and took my bike on a flight. Although There were places hiring out bikes, I found it would work out expensive, and some of the shops are not open on Monday, the day I return to London. So I had to give in and pack my bike onto an Easyjet flight.

The bike arrived intact, thank goodness. It's a shame it arrived five hours after I did! I should have known there'd be a problem when the guy in security at Gatwick Airport said to his colleague "who are we gonna get to move this to the plane?" Why I was in security is another story. The guy on the oversized baggage belt didn't want to lift my bike because he said that it wasn't a regular shape and reckoned it would get stuck in the scanning machine. Despite my point that this is something that I had done in the past without any problem, he wasn't prepared to believe me, and insisted that a porter take my bike up to a special security area where it would be taken manually to the plane.

So, lo and behold, when I arrived at Nice Airport at 9am, I experienced that heartsink moment when my bike was nowhere to be seen on the carousel. But thanks to the efforts by Wendy at baggage services I managed to get the bike later in the afternoon.

It didn't spoil my day too much. I spent the time going for a run on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice while waiting. However, it did make for a long day because by the time my bike arrived and I had gone through all the formalities etc. it was after 4pm when I set off to drive to Provence. When I arrived at my gite it was getting dark, and I was just ready to eat and go straight to bed.

Thanks to Wendy at Avia Baggage Services in Nice Airport, but Boo to Easyjet for not being on it at Gatwick.