So me and Onzadog are thinking of doing a little mtb holiday to Spain next year for my (gulp) 40th birthday and I’m wondering how best to get there with our bikes.

Only got experience of Easyjet to Geneva with the bikes before and they were okay, but when we looked at the likes of bmi (soon to be kaput anyway?) and Ryanair they seemed to have ridiculously small allowances for taking bikes on board (with Evoc bike bags the heaviest bike is about 35lbs). Looking at the likes of Skyscanner they mention Monarch, Thomson Holidays and Jet2 also fly to Malaga.

Anybody got any experiences of using any of them to fly to Spain with a bike?

Thanks

All packed by the same baggage handlers so as long as the allowance is ok you’ve probably got as much of a chance of a bad experience with any of them.

I’ve used Easyjet a fair few times with no problems so far.

I’ve just booked today with Ryanair to South France – bike allowance is 30 kilos, I’ll be stufffing a fair bit of kit in there too.

you looked at BA to Spain? We flew with them in SEptember, worked out as cheap as Easy Jet, more reputable (IMO, always had a fantastic experience), get food too! Bikes are charged at £28 per bag per way, just an excess luggage charge not listed as “specialist item” like Easy Jet is. Me and Mr MC each flew our bikes to India for 30kg then took hand luggage for a 2 week holiday … 7kg hand luggage! Well impressed with myslef. He flew a orange Alpine 160 and I had a Giant Cypher.

Yay, biking holiday!

BA +1. If you can plan ahead, the cost is as good or better than budget and the service is waaaaaaay better.

Just be aware that Madrid is probably the worst signed public building I have ever been in, interchange between the 2x T4 terminals can take you an hour, Iberia charge €75 per bike for internal flights, and TBH the Spanish couldn’t give a flying **** for customer relations.
However, on a high note Heathrow T5 is convenient and pretty well laid out compared to pretty much all other airports.

and TBH the Spanish couldn’t give a flying **** for customer relations about guiris.

😉
I had excellent service when travelling with a bike through Barajas.

Thanks for the replies – sounds like BA might be a good bet then. Actually I do remember now that we flew with them once before to Geneva (Onzadog and his hungry belly persuaded the stewardesses to donate him all and any unused packs of sarnies on the return flight!) back in the day before they started charging for bikes and they were good then.

I went with easyjet, fluing and bikes were fine but….

1st time they oversold the flight and I was the unlucky sod who didn’t get on.

2nd time I had to use their insurance and they were f***ing useless. Yes my broken arm isn’t going to kill me, but it is bloody painfull when you refuse to treat it and it takes 14 days to get it sorted!

So yes to the flights, no to the insurance.