Not to WA but I have flown with Virgin/pacific blue and they are really good. As long as you manage to keep under their max limit for a piece of luggage which i'm pretty sure is 32kg they will take it without question. I had a board, boom and gear bag which weighed 32.4 and a sail and mast bag which weighed 15kg and they didn't say a word. All they made me do was carry it all the way to the excess luggage area.

Virgin just changed their baggage rules... the following info was given to me by the friendly people at Virgin:

Unless you book a full fare or business class ticket the following applies:

- you have to pay $8 for a 23 kg allowance of baggage at the time you book the ticket
- if you have windsurf gear with you they will give you an additional 5 kgs of allowance for a total of 28 kgs.
- Ever kg over 28kgs is charged $8 per kilo.

For example if you have a double board bag which weighs 32kgs you are looking at
$8 for the 28kgs plus 4 kgs excess at $8 per kilo = $40 for a bag with 32 kgs.

If you want to take a second bag with 32 kgs that another $256 in excess charges.

As you can see, your excess charges quickly will outweight the cost of the ticket. Similar charges were introduced between Europe and Australia about 10 years ago. One of the reason why most Europeans these days rather fly to South Africa than Australia. To South Africa you pay a flat rate per board bag.

I am not sure what the situation is with freight. If anyone here knows of a company that does cheap freight to WA from the East Coast it would great to hear about.

Personally I don't understand why Airlines don't introduce a flat rate per surfboard bag, windsurfboard bag or windsurf quiver bag. It would make flying a lot less stressful and you would know exactly what to expect when making travel plans.

I guess this will mean in the long run that either fewer people will fly to WA from the East Coast to go windsurfing or a rental market opportunity will open up. However, I can see that most people would choose Hawaii over WA if the prices for tickets+gear transport were similar.

Cheers guys for the info.

thought about hiring gear but its never the same and need to have sponsors stickers on my sail so when i go and show them pics they dont get pissed :).

I saw those things about changes to VB baggage, but didnt look to closely so glad you clarified it for me.

Anyway - looks like flying is the easier option, so much quicker and cheaper even with a few excess baggage fee's.

I cannot wait!!!!! been watching Plug & Play 2 and the section with jeager Stone makes it looks friggin mad over there!

you lucky bastards who live there ;)

thanks again.

lanky said...

One of the most important thing with traveling and windsurfing is make sure all your gear is dry. Wet gear adds on heaps of excess weight which I found out the hard way when it rained for 2 days before my flight and I sailed the day I left. HAHAHa.

My gear is always wet, so when I packed my sail bag and weighed it, it was around 30kgs, i.e. just under the 32kg limit per bag. There were no surprises at the airport for me.

My mate who keeps his gear dry was okay going to WA, but when coming back his bag was overweight by a kg or two. Luckily they didn't make us repack it, as I don't know how we would have done it.