DE
EN
cycleguide Radreisen Europa auf facebook

You have three ways to book your bike for flying.


Many, especially low cost airlines, offer the booking of sports goods like a bike directly in the same booking process like you book your own seat. Other airlines are asking for a telephone call to reserve the bike. There a even some operators who are not interested in you bike before you come the airport because they use big planes and have enough space.

Online, on the phone or on-site - the bicycle must be booked, too.
Share it!
It's not all about the price for the flight on the right time to the right place for a cyclist. It's even more about carrying the bike on the plane. More and more people like to take their bicycle on a plane. That's lovely. But on the other hand it can be possible that the bike space in the cargo area of the plane is already fully booked during high season. The maximum freight capacity of a big plane is around 8 bikes. Especially routes to northern Europe and the Spanish island of Mallorca are very busy with bike transport in summer time. But back to daily business. Carriers like easyjet or Ryanair usually fly with big aircrafts. They use Airbus or Boeing planes with more than 100 seats, planes with a big cargo area. Most companies offer the bike booking during the booking process online. So you can be really sure that you can bring your bike with you into the plane. If you catch a connection without bike booking availability of an airline who usually offer it then you picked a connection with a too small aircraft or a flight with full bike load. Small aircrafts with something like 50 seats mostly have a cargo door with a diagonal size smaller than a bike.  For example some national hub connection flights of Airberlin to Dusseldorf use a small plane. So you can't book any connection flight for this route. The online booking of your bicycle is mostly possible in the second step after choosing date and route. Look out for a section like "sport baggage" or "extra luggage". Each passenger can bring one bike in. The fee for the bike in Europe is between 25€ and 75€. The bike fee will be part of the final invoice. But also in the year 2016 there are some old style airlines who need a telephone call for a bike reservation. Hope the music on hold song is "Iggy Pop - The Passenger
" :-). But it's not so bad at all, mostly they will confirm the bike transport in the same call.
© cycleguide 2016