plenty of other threads on this topic - did you do a search?

If you measure the hen house in a way most advantageous to you - it is under the number. If you measure it as an airline would, it is oversize.

I have flown Southwest with hen house, and been lucky. Would never fly United, or Delta or any other airline without expecting to pay the $150.

I did find 5 thread, but they were more than 1-1.5 yr old

Every time someone asks if they’ve done a search, I just want to mention how screwed up the search function is on ST. That and posting pics.

I have a hen house. I’ve yet to pay a fee with it after about 5-6 travels. Be wary of United. American and Southwest are more accepting.

1) never admit its a bike
2) use curbside check in and tip the guy $10-20. Make sure he see me that you are preparing a tip. Have money in hand when handing ID.
3) if there is no curbside, always do a self checkin at a kiosk and pay the baggage fee before u take it to the counter.

I have an Airport Ninja.

I chose the Ninja because it looked to be the only bag that genuinely met the size restriction. The other "systems" I looked hard at all seemed to require that you "controlled" the way the odd trapezoidal case was measured. So the Ninja looked far more likely to pass the linear size restriction unremarked.

The downside is that you have to remove the fork from the bike in order to get it to fit in the bag.

Re. protecting wheels. I figure that the bag does as good a job at this as any other soft sided bag. Nothing is perfect. If one was bound and determined to bash up you bike, it could be done. I've only taken one bike trip with it. I was very careful about packing it. I removed the rear dropouts and put in a brace to support the rear triangle from being crushed. I put big plastic things on the wheel axles so that they didn't get tempted to poke out thru the bag. I also strategically put bubble wrap around frame members.

I'm comfortable that my 180lbs, standing on the bike, wouldn't have hurt anything.

I asked about my Ninja being done in camouflage so, to my surprise, they did that for me at no cost. With a recent haircut, and radiating the typical hide-your-womenfolk charisma of that group, I am assumed to be active duty military with the usual big bags, and waved on thru.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

Brilliant!

Yeah, I've noticed that since I moved to the camo Hen House I almost never get questioned about contents. It also seems to help if I wear a camo U.S. Army baseball cap (military brother got me one), even though my hair's not short.

Re United, I've flown probably 25 roundtrips on them with the Hen House and have never been charged. It may help that I'm a 100K flyer; I don't know. In Hawaii I always use the curbside baggage guys (with a $20 tip), because they take care of getting the bags through the ag inspection, so I can just drop with them and then return the car.

My bike/wheels have never been damaged so far, knock wood.

Ian