The Best & Worst Airlines for Mountain Bikers

Getting a bike onto a plane isn’t always an easy feat, and while some generous airlines will include a bike as part of your checked baggage, many others will happily slap a big fee on top.

While smaller pieces of sports luggage such as golf clubs and skis can often slip through the net, bikes can sometimes get charged over £100 each way, depending on where you’re heading to.

While you don’t always have a choice of who to fly with, it’s useful to be able to compare how the different airline’s policies stack up on the issue, so we’ve taken a look at some of the world’s major airlines below.

We found that 10 of the 26 airlines we looked into offered to carry bikes free of charge, and while in most cases this was in place of your normal suitcase, it usually works out cheaper to pay to check in a suitcase than a bike!

On the other hand, the highest charges that we found were from Ryanair who charge £60 for ‘large sports equipment’ and Air France who charge up to £110, although this was only on certain long-haul flights.