Lost bikes by British Airways for L'etape LGW - Turin BA2578

Any update Nigel?

Sounds like a proper shit show, I hope you get as much out them as possible and a free flight/compo on top of your out of pocket expenses not to mention the bike!

This is precisely the reason I'm driving/supporting some friends to do the Raid alpine in two weeks time and hiring a VW transporter.

That said I was in favour of getting the train  in all honesty (Eurostar/SNCF (to geneva then back from Nice) by far the easiest/safest/least stressful way to get across France if you live within even 60 miles of London.

The charge for the bike on the eurostar is less than on any flight and the SNCF is free, you also don't need to stress about the 'chuckers' at the airports. Walking from gare du nord to Gare du lyon is about 15 minutes, on the way back it's a walk across the concourse.

Just did a quick check, £190 via Ryan Air from stanstead to Turin including a bike, 15kg/no reserved seat, no guarantee of a wheelie bag to go in overhead locker, a seat that's really only wide enough for an oompah-lumpah, stress of the chuckers and stress/getting to airport an hour before/being bumped/bikes not being loaded

OR £224 for a nice stress free journey, nice wide seat/table, no real luggage worries, not stressing about bike being loaded/damaged, arrive in the middle of the city and most definitely with your bike. End to end there's probably not an awful lot of time difference.

Flying with a bike, fuck that shit! Last time I flew in anything big was back in my army days, rail, boat or car for me.

I'm not sure that I can help, but I can perhaps offer some hope. My bike was declared lost recently following a trip back from a cycling holiday. It was however found, much to my relief, 3-4 weeks later. The problem was that the airline had put the wrong computerised baggage tag on my bike box. You would not imagine this is possible, but apparently it is not unheard of. 

With the wrong passenger name on the baggage tag, while the airline ould track the bike down, there was nothing to link it to me. Eventually I got hold of a sympathetic custom service official who put in the right calls and persuaded people to look inside some lost bike boxes.

The only tip I can offer is to keep nagging the airline and to put together a really good description of your bike. And then pray for someone sympathetic at the other end of the line. 

Really hope you get your bike back and soon.

For ironman events there's a company that will drive your Bike over for you. Costs slightly more than than flying with it but much less hassle. Look them up.

We had a nightmare last year with bikes.

Basically learnt the hard way that if you're flying out to Etape, fly out at least a week in advance. With a day to go, thousands of people are flying out and the airlines simply can't cope.

That's a pain. What are BA saying ? You need to kick up a fuss - Twitter - social media - claim the cost of your Etape back ? I have had friends miss events due to bikes not turning up - but luckily that's very rare.

Good luck with the bike.