Shipping

I would imagine if you ship it they will say it is an import 'as new' and slap a load of duty on it. You might as well mail order as many stores get discount shipping. Whereas if you carry it with you (and you ride it first too) it will just be a bike you're carrying and no duty (it will be used, right?). Carrying is probably a pain in the ass and you may well get stung with excess baggage, but is that more or less than the duty you'd get stung with? Hmmmm?

Or wait 'til Loz flies to LA first class again and have him bring it home

I brought my bike in from Germany in October. I rode it a few times over there so it was used.
The most important thing is to clean the bike. The quarantine officer was checking everything and warned me to always clean a bike, especially MTB properly!
I had a proper bike case with wheels and it was included in the 20kg you get from the airlines! Buy a light bike, and put 7 kg worth of T-Shirts, socks and so on in your Hand luggage!
Bernd

no, as my bike in the case came to about 15kg and I only had a bag with 9kg to check in (4kg over but got away with it) and stuffed a lot of cloth in a backpack (7kg).
check with your airline, some are ok with "Sports equipment".
Bernd

Nooooooooooooooooooo.

Change your airline to ANY other one possible, even if you think it means you'll be delayed. I gaurantee that your Air Canada flights will not be on time anyway, thats assuming they fly at all. Then there is the question of you never seeing your luggage again.

Just back from a family trip with 4 internal flights all on AC. Not one left on time, this included being loaded onto a plane and then told there are no pilots available for atleast an hour. They are so bad with luggage that the ski resort we went to has a truck booked on a daily basis to pick up its customers luggage left behind at Vancouver Airport and then drives it the 7hrs up the mountain to the resort. It gets there faster that way.

My advise would be to speak to the shop you are buying from. Get them to clean and strip the bike for you and then pack and ship it as a couple of boxes. As long as each is under the magic $1000 Australian, you won't have any problems with customs, and as its second hand I would think you should be able to do that pretty easily.

Good luck, if you stick with AC you'll need it.

Oh yeah, unless your on the arvo flight with the A380 don't expect your Qantas entertainment system to work. One last thing, when they ask what breakfast you want, go the cereal. Eggs that are cooked 14hrs before they are served to you don't taste too good on the way down, they taste even worse the second time around.

Let there be light

wow, not a good experience on your holiday!!!! Not nice to hear or read i should say! Glad you made it back to Oz!

I am not taking my ski gear with me. Only the boots and decided to rent the equipment in order to make room for the bike. Unfortunately I have to take the risk with AC and see what happens!!!!! Fingers crossed as i still have to check a bag anyway!!!

AC will charge me $25 for the box but due to international connection I might get away with it for free. As you know, it always depends on the person in the counter and how nice they wanna be. Bike has to be clean as you said so I am sure the shop will take care of that. As bike is ex-rental and purchased from the shop, I qualify as original owner and I still get the full warranty on the frame. I am organizing for the nice people at Supreme Cycles in Narra to put it back together once back and deal with Avanti (bike is a specialized) in case of any warranty problems in the future.

Qantas isn't a discount carrier. They charge premium rates and I don't think its too much to expect that you get the service you actually pay for.

Kind of got you by the short and curlies though, not like you can get off mid flight and ask for a refund

Let there be light

All airlines are discount carriers. Like, durh! How else are prices between here and the UK the same price as 10 years ago? Cost cutting, cost cutting and more cost cutting!