Hi all,
I've not flown with a bicycle for decades and plan to fly to Munich in July with a bicycle in a cardboard box.
Are there any preferred airlines for flying with a bike, any to avoid, any hidden costs or difficulties I need to be aware of?
Cheers
If you use any of the standard three budget airlines (Ryanair, easyJet, Jet2), you just book it on as a bike under Special Luggage. Ryanair is about £60 each way down to I think £35 (maybe £40?) for Jet2.
I've never had any issues but the usual rules of flying with budget airlines apply. Read their T&C's, behave nicely and you'll be less trouble than the usual stag & hen parties or clueless families with 18 suitcases between 4 of them.
Try, if possible, to fly direct Damage happens getting the thing between you and the aircraft, or one aircraft and the next. I've had no issues with BA, Lufthansa, Easyjet or Jet2. I would suspect KLM are great, until it has to get between aircraft in AMS. Likewise avoid transit in Frankfurt at all costs.
Hoping to fly direct from Bristol - Munich, maybe Birmingham at a push of LHR if I must.
Number of airports that fly to Munich has been greatly reduced. Last time I flew was 2018 and there were a couple of carriers going to/from Stansted. Now there's none.
Be aware that if you fly to Munich West, ie Memmingen, then the train ride into Munich is about the same as a train to MUC airport.
What doing once you get there?
@alpin being picked up by a van and then driving south east to somewhere warm to unpack the bicycle and cycle tour for a week or so
I'm now booked to fly Bristol direct to MUC, £50 extra for my bike. Excited!!!
sounds daft but if you dont have a box try and branded one (Trek, Specialized, etc...) rather than one from somewhere Decathlon.
3 of us did Manchester to Basel and my posher box faired much better.
I know its what you asked but meh 🙂
late edit - NOT what you asked 
What's wrong with Frankfurt for transfers?
You fly into the non-schengen terminal and fly onwards from the schengen terminal. Luggage invariably doesn't make it between the two. They're utterly useless for this. Three times I've flown out to meet a mate in austria for skiing. I go via AMS, he goes via FRA. Every single time they've lost something of his in FRA.
When i worked in Tromso, my preferred route was NCL-AMS-OSL-TOS with an overnight break in OSL. Getting a through ticket was often difficult, so you ran the risk of weather in TOS breaking one of the legs, usually the one home on a Friday. It was ok if you had status as you could rebook without being too shafted, but as an occasional traveller now, I'd want some comfort knowing that one missed leg wouldn't leave be hundreds of pounds out of pocket. Loganair sometimes have through tickets with Wideroe via Bergen and Stavanger, but the timings were always really odd. Avinor have recently opened the new international terminal in Tromso, so you can, at last, fly direct from EDI, MAN and LGW.