This summer I’m spending a week in Santa Barbara, California. From what I read there are some pretty awesome trails there. Hiring a decent bike will be north of £50 a day so to me it makes sense to invest in a bike bag and take my own rig out there.

Never done this before – so I’d appreciate anyone’s views on decent bike bags for planes. I’m not the most technically minded so I’d rather not have to fully dissemble the entire bike – hopefully just wheels , pedals and bars.

The other question I had regarded tyres, do they need to be partially / fully deflated. I ask given I ride tubeless and would hate them to unseat if fully deflated.

Thanks in advance.

I recently bought one of CRC’s pro bike bags (very similar to the highly regarded Evoc bike bag) and I have to say that the quality is great. Bag is much better than the older bag I had. I’m using it for the first time at the end of this month for a trip to the Alps, but after that I’d be happy to rent it to you, say £40 for the week! Where abouts are you?

By the time you have paid to fly your bike there covered it against baggage handlers wrecking it and bought a bike bag you may as well hire one there.

paulevans – South London – appreciate the offer

Edric64 – should be no cost for me – I do tons of biz travel with BA. Baggage handling is a concern though.

Depending on how often you plan to take your bike abroad, you may be better hiring one out there.
Unless you want to stick your bike in a cardboard bike box a decent bikebag can cost £80-£300! You’ll probably have to pay to take the bike on the plane too.
I have an Evoc bike bag and even though it wasn’t cheap, it has been on a few trips. It’s looking none the worse for it either and my bike has always arrived without damage. Each time I’ve been away it’s cost me £40-50 each way.
The thing to watch out for if you go for a hire bike is that the brake levers will be the ‘wrong’ way round, although they would maybe swap them round for you?

edit – sorry, there’s been a few replies as I wrote the above.

virgin currently will take 23kg of bike box/bag for free – used to be 32
“proper” bike cases are pretty heavy and you may not get down to that

If it’s a full sus you may be able to halve the frame relatively easily and get it into a big suitcase surrounded by clothes, then put wheels & fork etc in some kind of box with some foam packing

I’ve done a variety of the above for about 8 years now and no breakages (but one 14kg bike case has been FUBAR in that time – bike inside was undamaged though)

I haven’t tried it (yet – not had the bottle) but you could probably just put a big clear plastic bag over the bike, take off the spiky bits and rely on the handlers to recognise that it can’t have a hundred bags stacked on top of it

If you don’t want to use a cardboard box, try putting wanted advert up in the classifieds for a bike bag.

I got my 2ndhand CRC bag off here for under £40. It’s great.

I should be ok up to 32kg. Current bike is 25lbs – so this should leave plenty of room hopefully for other bits of kit…

Any views on tyre deflation?

I used an avenir padded bag which I lined with card. Took both wheels off, on the way there I left the forks in but on way back took them off and zip tied to the frame as it made the whole package a lot smaller and easier to carry. Take the discs off and zip tie them together, makes them harder to bend. And zip tie pipe lagging to everything round!

Just deflate the tyres a bit so they can squash to take up less room, but leave enough air in to protect the rims.

Wot tom says (bike bag from merlin £50) line bag with cut down box and pack with bubblewrap tie wraps and body armour/old tshirts

http://www.merlincycles.com/bike-shop/accessories/bike-transport/bike-and-wheel-bags/ take yer pick

I also cut some stainless tubes to length to put in dropouts/forks and tightened up with qr’s for more rigidity.

I should be ok up to 32kg

Buy, borrow a proper hard case then IMO