Take your bike in a plastic bag on an aeroplane

I as the author can tell you a lot about my favourite way to pack my own bicycle. I used this way in 180 of 187 flights. I buy my British Airways XXL plastic bags at Hamburg airport from time to time. Mostly I buy two for some backup. I used each bag at least for 8 flights, many for around 16 flights. Only once I had trouble with my bike in this kind of bag. I flew out from Skopje / Macedonia to Zurich in Switzerland. One of the break gears got broken but I was lucky and found a Magura breaks bike shop in Zurich downtown. I push my bike horizontally into the bag. Front wheel ahead. At the back wheel I have around 20cm left to wrap it with some tape. Before I push the bike into the bag I turn the bell and the computer socket down to protect it. I turn the handle bar to 90° parallel with the frame. I also remove the pedals and deflate the tyres half way. Finally I use a tension belt to connect the locker to the frame. As a safe way for sticking the luggage tag I make a small whole in the bag directly over the handle bar, so the tag can stick through the whole around the bar. But make sure that the biggest part of the tag is outside the bag for scanning. Never ever stick the tag on your frame. It has magical glue. It's normal that this XXL-bag gets wholes and cracks from time to time. But 6 flights should be minimum to reuse the bag. I think my record with the same bag was 20 flights before it looked like a mix of Swiss cheese and an UNESCO world cultural heritage.