I will be traveling to South Florida for the Miami International Tri in March. This will be the first time I need to transport a bike (I’m coming from NYC) and am borrowing a Performance bike case/shell. A few questions for the experienced:
Should I ship the bike early via FedEx or UPS?
If I decide to travel with the bike, do I need to tell Delta in advance I am bringing a oversized case?
What are the average costs of traveling with the bike? FedEx? UPS?
It is a non-stop flight, what are the chances of the bike ending up in Arizona?
Either ship it Fedex ground, or re-book on Jet Blue. JB is $50 each way, and I have a better than 50/50 record with them looking the other way on my soft SciCon case. Delta’s bike fees are sky high now.
First and foremost, you are looking at $350 RT for the bike. Anything and everything can get lost. United lost my bike on a nonstop from Chicago to Burlington, VT for 3 days before IMUSA in 2005. You can say I was a TRAINWRECK during this time, and the bike and luggage only arrived the morning of gear check in, and it was the most stressful 3 hours of my life trying to get my stuff ready to roll.
DO yourself a favor. Ship the bike. UPS, Fed Ex, it doesn’t matter. It will be FAR cheaper than using DL. Have a tracking number. Ship it with plenty of time and track it. Your best bet is to bring your stuff to a local shop and have them pack it and ship it for you.
As the flights were paid with miles, I am stuck with Delta. I am leaning towards using FedEx Ground.
Although I don’t have the dimensions for the case with me, what should I expect to pay for shipping a bike and how many days in transit will it take?
Thanks for your response.
Either ship it Fedex ground, or re-book on Jet Blue. JB is $50 each way, and I have a better than 50/50 record with them looking the other way on my soft SciCon case. Delta’s bike fees are sky high now.
From SOMA in Tempe, Ariz., back to Iowa it was $71 one way on UPS (I checked it on the plane for the trip down). My bike was fine after all thatm but I’m never paying the outrageous airline fees again, not that UPS is that reasonable.
I have a question if someone was to go down the path of shipping the bike via UPS or another carrier. where do you ship it to if you are staying in a hotel?
You can get a very good estimate here - so there are no oversized surprises when you get to the counter. (If the box is too large, it will be SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive …plug some numbers in and experiment).
You can often arrange with the hotel to see if they will receive a package for you and keep it in a secure area. Alternatively, you might be able to call a bike shop in the area and ask if they would receive it for you (and they can often assemble it for you too, if you aren’t mechanically inclined).
By the way, I’ve usually found the cheapest rates are available through FedEx when you create the shipping label through your FedEx account (which is quick, free, and easy to set up). I shipped a fairly heavy complete bike that I sold on Ebay from Pennsylvania to California for less than $50 with them. It was much cheaper than their normal rates.
granted it was out of hawaii where it can be ‘island style’ in this dept ya bradd-ah kine but…
i got hit with 85 total for one bag and a 70 lbs bike case on WED night on the delta red eye back to the mainland.
I will probably go with FedEx ground, shipping it a week early. I know of a bike shop in the area and will give them a call them to see if they would accept the bike. I’m sure there will be a fee, but that is to be expected. Will see if I can have them send it back to me too.
If you decide to bring it with you, keep the case under 50 pounds. Bike charges on most airlines do not mean overweight charges. You can and will be charged a bike case fee plus an overweight fee if it exceeds 50 pounds for most airlines.
With a lot of the hard cases, 1 inch in how the case is measured will make a huge difference in the shipping cost. Experiment with the online calculators to see what I mean. Also, if you don’t want to pay extra to ship it to a shop, and assuming you are renting a car, another option is to have it held at one of the FedEx/UPS depots…it works pretty well.
Great idea, will experiment with the calculators. If I say the case is a few inches shorter than it actually is, do they perform random measurements? With the millions of packages they ship, I can’t imagine they would.
I also assume I can save some coin if I take it to a FedEx depot/center myself (have one about 20 minutes away).
Thanks.
With a lot of the hard cases, 1 inch in how the case is measured will make a huge difference in the shipping cost. Experiment with the online calculators to see what I mean. Also, if you don’t want to pay extra to ship it to a shop, and assuming you are renting a car, another option is to have it held at one of the FedEx/UPS depots…it works pretty well.
Should I ship the bike early via FedEx or UPS? ***You can if you want, compare the cost to the airline cost
If I decide to travel with the bike, do I need to tell Delta in advance I am bringing a oversized case? ***No they love surprises, like when they can make extra revenue or lose extra revenue.
What are the average costs of traveling with the bike? FedEx? UPS? ****Check the online calculators
It is a non-stop flight, what are the chances of the bike ending up in Arizona? *****Probably not much of a concern at all.
What else should I be considering? ****It’s going to cost you and likely more then your ticket to fly the bike. Bring a $20 to slip to the check in agent to see if that allows it to fly for free. TSA sometimes isn’t the best when it comes to repacking a bike. IN all the times when I’ve flown with a bike I’ve had problems 2x, both were TSA related.
As the flights were paid with miles, I am stuck with Delta.
That’s unfortunate. Delta seems to have been the most draconian with the new bagage/bike fees.
Lots’ of threads on ST about this - do a search.
I think what triathletes need to start to do is to start to shop around a bit for air tickets. There are some airlines now that are clearly better than others. It’s easy to just default pick the the cheapest fare that shows up at the top of the list on a Expedia, Travelocity or Hotwire search, and think, “Wow, I got a great deal”. It may be a great deal until you start to factor in, bike charges, transfer times, connections and so on. Some time ago I started doing this - paying more up-front so as to minimize extra charges, transfer times, ridiculous connections and other hidden hassles and costs.
It’s a cliche - but if it seems like too good a deal, it probably is!!
If the airline crushes your bike, they will do nothing for you. Thye will also charge you out the nose for the priviledge of doing so. Ship your bike ot a bike shop and ask them to assemble it and check it over to make sure it is race worthy.
After the race, have them pack it and ship it back to you. It will reduce your headache and allow you to be more ready for your race.
Sometimes they do measure. And then they ding the branch owner who shipped it. We ran into a shop owner who was strict about this. As a result I simply adjusted some things and tightened my straps tighter to get under the measurement.
The interesting thing about the majority of airlines is that they started charging for extra bags checked (or even one bag checked) when fuel prices were extremely high. I think this is the same situation for high price bike checks on airlines. Last I checked the price of fuel is about a third of what it used to be. Do FEDEX and UPS still charge a fuel surcharge?