Get Serious! 44lbs!?! What do you travel with?

[pilot fish]

I think this is kind of simple. Don't fly DAE because of their unrealistic and restrictive weight allowance. When enough people chose another airline, or destination that does not require DAE travel exclusively, they will get the message. For divers with gear, that is unacceptable. 50 lb is bad enough, down from 70 lb, but a 44 lb total limit makes me seek other carriers or destinations. It's a big dive world out there, you don't HAVE to put up with that crap.

 

[CUunderH2O]

My buddy and I just got back from Bonaire. Our charter flight from Toronto was to Curacao so we had to fly DAE to & from Bonaire. On our way to Bonaire DAE charged us $25 in overweight charges. Mostly because I had a bag for clothes/toiletries as well as my dive gear bag. FWIW, my dive gear bag weighed a lot less this year because I switched to a rolling duffel from Roots; much lighter than last year's Armor bag. On the way back, the charges are higher but we caught a break because the scale didn't zero out (was .6 kilograms empty), so they took 5kg off our total weight and we paid $13 in overweight charges. We also didn't make a fuss over it unlike a large group in front of us so that may have helped. We carried our regs in our backpacks to make the checked luggage lighter, plus I carried my camera gear. Heavy but manageable.

 

[djac5700]

DAE isn't the only carrier from Curacao, is it? I flew Divi last year...

Found this random article on getting to Bonaire. Don't know if it's been posted before...

http://www.bonairepros.com/newsletter/dec-06/Getting-to-Bonaire.pdf

 

[CUunderH2O]

Divi Divi also flies from Curacao to Bonaire. However, DAE's roundtrip price was better than Divi's, as was their schedule.

 

[bperrybap]

I think this is kind of simple. Don't fly DAE because of their unrealistic and restrictive weight allowance. When enough people chose another airline, or destination that does not require DAE travel exclusively, they will get the message. For divers with gear, that is unacceptable. 50 lb is bad enough, down from 70 lb, but a 44 lb total limit makes me seek other carriers or destinations. It's a big dive world out there, you don't HAVE to put up with that crap.

Seems a bit short sited. Many times on these carriers
it can still be cheaper for for the air travel as a whole (air ticket + overage charges)
even if you do end up going over the limit.

I'd rather only pay for the extra weight when necessary rather
than have to buy a more expensive ticket
every time that allows me carry a lot more weight than I may have.


--- bill

 

[fppf]

My wife and I just got back from Little Cayman.
Same type of issue but not as bad, if you don't have over 20 lbs of camera gear.
There limit was 55 lbs checked bag and a 15 lbs carryon. We did fit within the limits, but for all our hard work we still needed to send our bags back to Grand Cayman a day early so our bags would make the next out going flight.

Next trip we take we will do one of 2 things.
A) just buy an extra seat, it was $100 round trip ticket.
B) pack 2 bags, one got to have to dive and one nice to have. Pay overweight and extra bag fees on te nice to haves and expect they wont make it on site until a day or to later.

Also travel mid week, the planes wont be as full and may have room for the extra bags on that flight