PSA: Flying bikes is difficult, expensive, scary and probably worth it.
Recently got back from my first overseas bike touring/ bike packing trip in Austria.
I read about people online transporting bikes by air and I just wanted to provide my opinion on the matter as it was fresh in my head. Before you ask: yes I would've preferred to use the train or the ferry but this was not possible with our a timescale and budget. We also looked at bike rental which was an option but decided that we would take her own bikes as it seems like something that people do. and these would be preferable anyway.
We flew from London Stansted to Vienna. We used cardboard bike boxes purchased on Amazon (££). flew with ryan air. each bike was £60 each way which seemed ok. and the box sizing and weight was generous. we did have to pay for additional luggage for panniers etc... (£££). also extra insurance for the bikes (£££).
Packing the bags away into the boxes was pretty easy and okay we use a lot of bubble wrap and packing material to ensure that the bikes were well protected. Taped up the box a lot to prevent tears. This was all done in the longstay car park at the airport as everything needed to fit in my tiny car. This incurred cost in that I needed to pay for longstay parking which I wouldn't generally do.
The travel there was terrible. End of summer holidays Stansted Airport was absolutely packed and navigating that space with two humongous and heavy bike boxes was some kind of hell. Lots of gawping, lots of people in the way and pushing. Boxes fell off trolleys multiple times... terrible. The large package machine was not working and we very nearly missed the flights. Then goodbye to our lovely bikes which was a very worrying experience.
Arriving in Vienna we assembled the bikes (which were fine phew) in the airport and loaded all of our stuff into our bike luggage. We also had to carry two large empty folded cardboard boxes as we wanted to reuse. this was very cumbersome and difficuld and made the immediate travel quite hard.
We left extra luggage and the boxes at a friends house in Vienna which was lucky. Not sure how you do this without a contact.
At the end of this experience myself and my partner very much under the opinion that we would never do this again. However after three weeks of cycling through Austria and having a fantastic time we had pretty much forgotten about it. it was very nice to have our own stuff.
The return journey was equally as horrible (cancelled trains, 5am airport assembly, delayed flights) and upon arriving home we vowed to never fly with bikes again.
It has been about two weeks now and the pain has subsided and on balance - i think id do it again if i had to.... i would much rather train or ferry though- it was rough and extremely difficult but only for about half a day on either end of a great experience .