Anyone have any experience flying with a longer downwind board? It seems most airlines limit the total size of a bag to 115 in (L+W+H).
I have a 7-7” board I’d like to fly with but in a bag this is more like 122 in. Worth just going for it?
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Who ya flying with?
I fly with Alaska and Hawaiian all the time. When they ask how long the board is, I tell them 7’6", its a 8’8". So far so good.
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Unsure yet - have a few trips planned. Probably Delta or American, and Southwest.
@shep good call haha! Might be in Maui in Feb - would love to link up.
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All depends on the counter person in my experience. Some couldn’t care less and some like to give you a hard time. Iv flow American with longboards before and had no problems but Iv also heard of them turning away a friend before. Cant speak for delta or southwest but the only way to know for sure is just go for it haha
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Leave time to drop it back in the car and bring a smaller parawing backup board I guess
I have found that having the porter take your gear is worth the $.
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This. If you are severely overweight or length, the curbside guys work on tips and can usually push it right through.
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Also depends on the airport. Flying from LHR they are strict, flying to LHR from CPT the check in people dgaf at all. (BA strictly don’t take boards over around 7’ I think)
Mostly scared to get somewhere and then be told “you cant fly with that“ on the way home. But I guess you could make the argument that it came with me and theyd probably let it slide
I flew with Alaska last winter (La Ventana) with my 7’7”. Had the board in a bigger padded bag, and didn’t even get a question at check in either way. I think the size limit at that time for a surf board was 9’, but could be wrong.
I used to fly with boards a lot and Air Canada is the only airline I have ever been given a hard no, they won’t fly anything over 6’ at least on trans pacific routes. Singapore is best, I once flew Bangkok to SF with two full size SUP boards in cardboard boxes no charge (a board counts as a bag). I’m heading to La Ventana over winter break and Southwest has recently updated their board policy to count a surfboard as a bag and oversize fees are waived. The key is that it needs to be under 50 lbs and 1 or 2 checked total or fees go way up. I’ve flown to Hawaii several times on Southwest in the past several years and they are either by the book or once in a while they will “forget” to charge you.
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Didnt Joel Tudor had a go with Hawaiian/Alaska Airline lately ? I heard that you can now fly with a 10.5’ longboard for free. You might check on that.
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Yes hit me up for sure.
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Read the airline’s sport luggage policy and have it ready to show the counter agent, many have exclusions for the L+W+H terms when checking boards, but some do not.
I flew with Fiji recently, they allow sports to count as standard checked item up to 30kg and surfboard up to I think 2m length(not L+W+H). Agent tried to charge me $250 for my 6ft bag, but I persisted multiple times, showing their own policy until they caved.
Many airline’s will fly golf bags free if not surfboards, so might be able to swing that for a midlength
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Yea I’ve flow with a ML multiple times - just never a DW board. Gonna hope for the best I guess