Airlines and skis

[randoskier]

Flying with skis (as opposed to ski flying), anyone have any good stories? Tips? Here is my two (EURO) cents worth.

We are constantly flying to Scandanavia with skis and occasionally to the USA, and the Pyrenees (we can drive to the Alps and Dolomites in a couple hours). We are also frequently flying with pulks, plus all the gear and food for a long tour.

We have mixed experiences with ski transport depending on airline. KLM is the absolute worst on Earth, last year we flew with them to Trondheim from Venice- one-stop Amsterdam- our skis made one stop in Amsterdam and stayed there. It took KLM six LONG days to deliver our skis plus one of our pulks to Trondelag where we were waiting to begin our supposedly 15 day tour (we lost over a 1/3 of our tour). KLM has two flights a day from A-dam to Trondheim but it took 6 days to get them there- they were not lost; they located them in A-dam right away. The ground service for baggage delivery in Trondheim is run by the Norwegian airline services company Wideroe- the woman who dropped them off said KLM and an English budget airline (name escapes me) were the worst in the world for skis that they lose or delay scores of them in Trondheim, after us she was on her way to drive a couple of hours to Åre, Sweden to deliver several other displaced pairs of skis. So KLM is a never-ever-again airline for us, skis or no skis.

Lufthansa, SAS, and Norwegian have all been great, never any problems at all. I see that Lufthansa has a "200 cm limit" on ski length now, I wonder if that is enforced, if it is I would wager a simple phone call could sort it out- always best to address these issues before the airport because all you need is the one stickler guy and the law is on his side. I am skiing on 189s this trip so no prob. In the states we try to only fly Delta and have never had a problem with them.

We like to fly to Oslo (or Stockholm) then take a sleeper train to the north so there are less possibilities of airlines losing our gear and we can put our pulks and skis right in our two-bed compartment- or for less clutter put the pulks in the storage- NSB errr...I mean Vy has never charged us for this storage space. You can also ski directly from the train into the wilderness from many, many stations. You cacth the train right under Oslo Gardamoen airport.

The second thing is luggage cost at the moment- we thought we had a good deal this year- Milan to Oslo for 75 EUR one-way including two 23kg bags (one being skis). It was on FLYR the Norwegian budget airline. Of course they went bankrupt as soon as we bought the tickets, gone after 19 months of operation, 20 would have been perfect for us! I flew them last year and they were fine. So since we have booked a lot of cabins on our ski route and had two train tickets we had to find another flight- then I began to notice that the rates for the "second bag" have gone nuts- 65 EUR to Oslo each way just for the second bag, plus the 30 EUR for the first- so 380 EUR just for luggage cost for us. Not long ago we used to fly to Oslo RT for 35 EUR, and 20 EUR a bag! At the current price it became about the same as business class so in the end we just booked business class Lufthansa. They fly from Venice one-stop (Munich) to Oslo so we picked a flight with a 2 hr. layover in Munich to assure that there is time to get the skis across- oversize luggage often does not move as fast as normal luggage so the flight with 1hr layovers make us very nervous nervous.

We also keep pulks pre-positioned in a few places where we ski- we have a pair in Nord Trondelag and one on the Saltfjellet in the arctic. We take the traces with us they fit easily within our ski bags. The last time I flew to Finnmark luggage cost were high so just built hardware for a Paris pulk and bought a new one in Kirkenes, the sport shop let me use their drill and I had the hardware on in 5 minutes and hit the snow. At the end of my ski in Ivalo Finland I unbolted my hardware and gave the pulk away, cheaper than flying with it. The Jet Sled Jr. is a great pulk to travel with its dimensions let it go as normal baggage and they are very strong and cost like forty bucks. I don't like fiberglass pulks and I do not like the Norwegian H-system of traces, I like the fiberglass X system and made my own poles and attachments. The X system tips over less and follows you better in descent, it also fits in you ski case for travel.

Sometimes we use the Hurtigruten ship to get to skiing or back...but that is another story.