Tents and Flying

[scienceteacher]

We are going to Canada this summer and will have to buy a large tent (or two small ones) for the children - we are going to a family reunion where there will be over 20 children and enough beds just for the adults.

We will buy the tents when we get there, but would like to bring them back if we can.

The British Airways baggage policy does not mention tents among the list of sporting goods it will accept.

Does anyone know if showing up at the airport with camping equipment is likely to cause a problem?

bump

ooh lord British airways are notoriously painful with regards to excess baggage. If the tents are packaged up they will treat them like bags. You used to pay by the kilo, but this has changed to a flat fee on some routes (I think £90 for each extra bag). You should check if it?s a flat rate or per kilo for Canada to UK. Their per person kilo allowance is very stingy so you will defo be over with the tent weight. You may want to consider (if you don?t need them back at home in a hurry) a freight company- it?s not as complicated as it sounds, your tents just fly separately. There are usually plenty of cargo companies to choose from and they tend to be based near the airport so you can drop them off on route (some pick up).

ps- have travelled with tents and with regards to the whole dangerous objects (ie tent pegs part they won't care if its checked into hold

Thanks for that! That is really useful info.

There are seven of us in the family, and we are very light travellers. The last time we went to North American, we took 3 suitcases between us, so will have plenty of baggage allowance. We won't be doing a lot of other shopping, so will be fine with our customs limits too.

I had a look at one of the websites recommended here, and they gave really good info on weights and packed dimensions. It looks like a big tent that is one of our candidates is lighter than the max weight per case (23kg) and smaller than the largest case allowed.

Before posting here, I had absolutely no idea of the size of a packed tent (the only tents we have had are 2-3 man from BK).

Looking at the BA website, they are very generous with sporting gear (eg large cricket holdall, bike bag, and bowling equipment, all of which is much heavier and bulkier than a tent). They just don't mention camping as a sport.