Rigid bike bag question

topcattim

I'm off to the Etape de Legende soon and planning to fly. This leads to three questions for me:

1. would I be nuts to put my bike in a padded bag as opposed to a rigid bag? 2. does anyone know anywhere where I can hire a rigid bag from? I plan to ask around amongst my few cycling contacts and also down at the LBS, but just in case, I wondered whether there were any commercial hire companies for this sort of thing? 3. does anyone have any useful experience/tips re flying with bikes? It looks as though I'll go Easyjet...will I need to pay excess baggage, or warn them in advance?

Thanks!

Bronzie

Some of this was discussed here recently on this thread:
http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtop ... t=12537650

topcattim

Thanks Bronzie. There's some useful advice on there. It looks as though the general opinion was that soft/padded bags would be ok on flights. I'd be interested to hear any further opinions on this...I know that my LBS does hire out padded bags, so this may be the way to go.

Bronzie

topcattim wrote:

It looks as though I'll go Easyjet...will I need to pay excess baggage, or warn them in advance?

I flew with them from Nice last year. I think you have to book your bike on as "sporting goods" when you book your ticket - the bike was £35 flat rate fee I believe, no weight limit, so we stuffed all our heavier gear in there so we could make the 15kg limit on the main hold baggage easily.