u/jorvay

So with bike travel season warming up, some folks might be end up landing in this subreddit looking for info about booking riding trips to biking hotspots like BC or Quebec. The reality is that Porter's bike policy is the least clear from any of the Canadian carrier websites these days so I called them to get some answers. Then I prepared the following for the mountain biking subreddit and thought it might fit here as well. Here's a quick breakdown of the four airlines I've looked at for traveling this year:

Airline	Checked Bag Cost	Bike Handling Fee	Max Weight Inc. in Fee	Max Allowable Weight	Overweight cost	Max possible cost
Air Canada	$45	$50	32kg (70lbs)	32kg (70lbs)	$0	$95
WestJet	$45	$50	45kg (100lbs)	45kg (100lbs)	$0	$95
Porter	$40	$50	23kg (50lbs)	32kg (70lbs)	$20/kg	$270 (at 32kg weight limit)
Air Transat	$55	$50	32kg (70lbs)	32kg (70lbs)	$0	$105***

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Notes:

1. ***Air Transat often uses Porter as a domestic flight partner and Porter's fees and limits would apply. Check this carefully!
2. All pricing here is in Canadian Dollars ($CAD)
3. Air Transat charges a higher bike fee for international flights
4. Some fancy airline tickets include a checked bag. That can be applied to your bike for all airlines above (i.e. remove the checked bag cost from the totals above)
5. Checked bag fee is for 1st checked bag. Some airlines charge more for 2nd checked bags.
6. If you're using connecting flights across different carriers, you may should do some extra checking to make sure you budget accordingly for baggage fees
7. Air Canada used to accept the $50 bike fee as the baggage fee as well so your total cost each way was $50. It was a sweet deal that seemed to end some time around 2023
8. You may have seen on Porter's site or on Reddit that they have a really small (203cm) limit for the combination of length, width, and height of the bag/box. I called Porter and an agent confirmed they do not enforce this for bikes - which is good because no bike box on earth would fit. Looking at other airline size limits, this may actually be a typo meant to be the max-dimension limit, as 203cm is the typical max-dimension limit for others (aka max single dimension of length, width, OR height)