Buying Your Surfboard All Over Again

The quickest way to lose money these days is to fly someplace to surf, because airlines have decided that one way to make up for fuel costs is to charge extortionist rates for checked boards. A normal fee for “board handling” is 25 to 50 bucks, one way. That’s now gone whistling up past $100. For some reason the fee keeps rising on long-distance flights although no one expends any more sweat or time on them with “handling.” It has nothing to do with weight, apparently. Golf bags are typically not charged at all.

A commenter at this travel blog, who used to handle luggage, says,

surfboards are a pain in the arse but not enough to justify a 300 dollar fee!

Usually we shove the surfboards in the tail of the plane where we don’t put anything else but the occasional casket anyway.

Oh and if the airline is charging extra for “special care and handling” it would be nice if the people doing the “special care and handling” would get to see that money…

Surfline has an airline comparison chart. It’s missing TAP, which flies to Portugal, Spain, Africa, and Brazil, and gouges charges €150 per board each way.

Thanks to Ed.

     posted 27 August 2008 by Michael Scott Moore

  1. Just curious…how much is a new full board these days?

    — e    Aug 27, 07:59 am    #

  2. Eh, they’re expensive, from $300 to almost $1,000, which is boggling. But €300 (a round trip on TAP for any old board) will buy you something custom-made.

    — Mike    Aug 27, 11:14 am    #

  3. USD? Makes my boogie board and golf clubs sound cheap for Hawai’i! I’m kidding, almost. I haven’t bought a full board in 20 years.

    — e    Aug 27, 01:51 pm    #

  4. Maybe you should just buy the board a seat, too. That might work out cheaper.

    — Sarah    Aug 27, 02:26 pm    #

  5. Hah. In some cases it would.

    e: €300 = $450 American bones.

    — Mike    Aug 27, 02:57 pm    #

  6. I actually saw a guy once who was moving to Hawai’i and he tried to pull buying a seat for (most of) it all and pull this stunt on the now-defunct ATA. This was right before they went bankrupt. He tried buckling in a board and clubs, all with its own carry ons. The funny part was, we, as fellow passengers, thought it was so clever that he should be allowed to get away with it. Of course, the airline said no, but it was all pretty funny on a practically empty flight from LA or SF to Maui. I think this was last February. He even explained that the surf board and golf clubs had a boarding pass, to which, and this is what got the passengers to his side, the ground crew asked how those “passengers” would handle an oxygen emergency. Classic. Just classic. It turned into a giggle fest for about 100 of us. The board didn’t fit. They let him onto the plane and he tried getting it all together and it didn’t fit. But the on-board crew wouldn’t admit it was a mistake he even got that far—they had to deal with us for four+ hours. It has to be one of the funniest things I have ever seen in several hundred thousands of miles flying. Golf clubs and the board…I still laugh a knee slap about it. Turns out the guy had used flier miles for the golf clubs and the board and bought two tickets in his own name. It’s one of the funniest scenes I’ve ever seen. In the end, ATA just checked everything, and during the flight he said to a group of us that he figured that would be the reaction all along. Awesome!!!!

    — e    Aug 27, 03:48 pm    #

  7. Howdy…you should see the bicycle charges nowadays…up to $140 each way for some U.S. airlines, and $100 to and from Europe, where in the past it had more often than not been free.

    — Michael Berk    Sep 2, 04:41 pm    #

  8. I’d like to see someone try to fly with a ten-speed bike in a specially-purchased cabin seat.

    — Mike    Sep 2, 06:29 pm    #