Changes to the carriage of sporting equipment
Sporting equipment will be included as part of your free checked baggage allowance.
If the number of bags exceed your free allowance you will be charged the excess baggage rate for each extra bag.
The heavy bag charge £30 ($50) will apply each way to all bags more than 23kg (51lbs) and up to 32kg (70lbs).
All sporting equipment (excluding the not acceptable for carriage list) will be accepted for travel only if they are packed correctly within the maximum weight and reduced maximum dimensions of 190cm x 75cm x 65cm (75in x 29.5in x 25.5in).
The carriage of firearms will incur a £50 charge each way to cover third party handling costs.

190cm x 75cm x 65cm – As far as I can work out that means no bikes

Well as BA are part of the one world alliance thingy, along with American Airlines and a few others they have to use the same regs and I took a bicycle on AA the other month in place of an item of checked baggage for no extra cost. That was a trans-atlantic flight though.

Have BA been taken over by Ryanair?

Don't know when you booked / travelled but new regs:

The changes to our sporting equipment policy will apply to bookings made from 31 July 2009, for customers travelling from 7 October 2009.

190cm x 75cm x 65cm is plenty to get a dismantled bike into so yes, you can take bikes in bike bags or boxes. I've a bike box in the loft that I know my bike fits into that is smaller than this

hmmm

This is similar to the bag i have and it is 123cm x 76cm x 21cm, so only exceeds one stated dimension on the above list and i know i can fold the top over and strap it down with some lugguage straps so wouldn't say bikes are banned on that score.

Only thing that matters is what is the weight allowance.

Recently flew BA just before this came in and my bag was smaller than this, weighed 20kg with a fair bit of stuff in it and a checked bag of 8kg with pretty much everything else. You can still pretty much take 2 flight cases on as hand luggage with BA so it should be quite possible. Added to that flying out of T5 is so much less disagreeable than I'd expected.

The ubiquitous Neil Pryde bag is 128cm x 88cm x 23cm

so, big restrictions on surfboards, proper skis, god know what else?

Yeah, easily possible to get a bike down to those dims. you wont be able to roll it onto the plane, but take wheels off, bars/stem off and seatpost off and pack in a box then a thin bag (what I do) and you'll be fine. They wont check to the mm, just ask you to go take it to the oversized baggage area.

A breath of fresh air their policy is to include bikes as part of your allowance.

I believe a big part of the reason that this has come into force is that BA use Terminal 5 at Heathrow, and the new automated baggage handling system can't deal with luggage over a certain size.

I'm a kayakaer and until these restrictions came into force BA were the airline of choice when it came to flying with a kayak. No longer, they won't carry kayaks, or surfboards, skis, paragliders etc. It's been discussed to death in kayaking circles.

Virgin seem to be the long-haul carrier of choice now when it comes to taking your toys with you, although I haven't flown with them myself so can't comment personally.

TBH if you've got such a specialist sport why cant you hire a Kayak at the other end?…..mind you someone outside of a sport could say the same (niave) question about bikes I guess

Just measured my Plant X bike bag 120cm x 90cm x 25cm – it isn't the smallest bike bag but it isn't the largest either. It's quite a tight fit if I recall so I'm not sure I could strap it down to 75cm.

You can hire boats in lots of countries, but like you say, it's similar to bikes, when you're throwing yourself down a rapid that might just kill you if you get it wrong, you want to be in your own kayak, that's just the right size, you are 100% familiar with and trust, and is outfitted properly for you.

If you were going to Africa to ride down a big-ass mountain, where you could die if you got it wrong, would you hire some shonky African bike from the 1970's that you hadn't even seen, with dodgy brakes, no suspension and which was probably going to be the wrong size, or would you take your own?

Well it's the same with kayaking, only more so.

I'd like to try Kayaking. I tried to get in three and all were too small on the aperture for my big ass/hips 🙁

all were too small on the aperture for my big ass/hips

Obviously nothing to do with your as/hips being too big and full of fat.

its so much easier just hiring a bike at the other end (if its possible). I did this with AQR, saved loads of hassle. Quite refreshing not spending the whole journey whether by car or plane not worrying about your bike.

Plus you can hire a bike that works well where you're going, which might not be simialr the bike you use locally.