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This is a bit niche, but can anyone who has been in a similar position please recommend the best brand/model of luggage that enables you to maximise BA’s Club Europe baggage allowance of 2 x 32kg bags whilst still adhering to the BA defined dimensions of “Up to 90 x 75 x 43cm (35 x 30 x 17in)”? Has anyone ever experienced BA actually checking the dimensions of bags that aren’t obviously oversized?
Moving back to the UK imminently and doing a couple of flights to London and back in CE in the next fortnight to bring back belongings and sort out London life admin. Due to the faf and additional cost of shipping personal possessions back to the UK post Brexit we are aiming to bring back all of our stuff on flights and have booked CE tickets specifically to utilise the generous luggage allowance.
It’s the non-uk airport that may not like an oversized bag.
These dimensions are massive. If you could get a bag that size, depending what you pack in it, you could be way past 32kg.
I use Briggs & Riley as I’ve found it to be indestructible (so far)
I have a case with the following dimensions (50.8 x 29.2 x 71.1 cm) that is 109 litres and it is very easy to pack it to be well past 23kg without trying too hard. I also have its little brother which is 83 litres and I’ve had the 83 litre case at bang on 23kg and it wasn’t even expanded!
If you could get a case at BA’s max dimension I think that would be 290 litres so unless you are bringing back cotton wool you would be overweight.
For clothes that are well packed I suspect you wouldn’t want much past 120 litres as clothes can be heavy.
FYI I did similar moves before and for books and CDs (remember them?) I used a heavy duty cardboard box with a lot of parcel tape round it!
@Richie thanks, something to bear in mind flying out of Berlin.
@Froggee appreciate the insight! Re the cardboard box scenario, are BA bothered about whether the baggage is in a conventional case or can we get creative with boxes? We have a bike turbo to bring back and it’s an awkward shape so a box may be more realistic as long as this won’t raise eyebrows at check in.BA weren’t bothered at my cardboard boxes at Bermuda and Hong Kong. As long as it is secure and the box and it’s contents can withstand being hurled about and having lots of luggage on top of it you should be grand. But if it’s raining and they leave your box out in the rain you might suffer structural integrity issues! It’s possibly one time I would consider paying these weird clingfilm people to wrap my bag at an airport.
It’s at your risk but much weirder things have been out in an aircraft hold than a box…
I second Frogge’s comment. You are really likely to use up all the weight before volume is a concern. Also remember that a bigger bag will be heavier, so less weight available for your stuff. Just try it out with the bags you have, it’s really not that difficult to get to that much weight – I’ve gone above 23kg in a light weight carry on sized bag…
But importing personal stuff to the UK is not that much of an issue in fact. You just basically fill out a form – in my case DHL at the time messed it up and said they had to charge me custom duties, which I paid because they refused to deliver otherwise; but paid with a credit card and got the refund into a debit card, so even got a few points in the process.
Good luck with the move!It’s possibly one time I would consider paying these weird clingfilm people to wrap my bag at an airport.
No need to pay for the airport service, any supermarket clingfilm does the same job. Amazing how far a roll goes.
Go for something a bit more heavy duty, pallet wrap, under a tenner a roll on ebay.
Can’t speak about the box scenario but I agree wholeheartedly that you will almost certainly bulk out before exceeding the weight limit of a large case. I speak from significant experience of Mrs S collecting toiletries from our trips to Asia, the last lot weighed almost 5Kg! To be fair these are all given to our daughter who puts them in a cupboard at the hospital where she works, they are used to provide essential products for emergency admissions. What I would add after I digressed so much is that the strap handle electronic scales sold online are surprisingly accurate, again I speak from experience of trying to cram large cases with heavier items whilst still keeping them less than the normal Asian 30Kg luggage limit.
Thanks all! In terms of the luggage, I was mainly asking as we have already transported a fair bit of luggage back to the UK over the last couple of months when visiting friends and family and for various reasons most of our existing cases we used for this have stayed there so we need to buy some new bags anyway for these final trips, but think I will just buy some cheap canvas holdalls given that as you have all advised, we’ll likely use our allowance without having to try too hard (life lesson: buy less stuff in future!)
@Froggee good to know re the boxes thanks, I think we will try this for the turbo and pad round it with clothes. On the beer as check in luggage front, we have managed to amass a decent gin and whisky collection but in the interests of bringing back things that are more difficult to replace I think we will donate most of it to our friends in Berlin!@Rui_N unfortunately we had a customs nightmare shipping a bike from London to Berlin despite having followed everything to the letter, and a friend here had a horror story of losing half of their belongings (also sent via courier from the UK to Berlin) when they moved, so we have decided we’d rather take our chances with bringing it with us on flights (with plenty of airtags involved obviously!) Thanks for the good wishes, looking forward to the faf all being over 🙂
@James and @davefl I’ll start scouring out the best DIY wrapping!
@strickers thanks for the tip re the strap handle scales, we don’t have one so this sounds very useful.Last time I did this I used one of those soft bags that go on roof racks. It was huge and they thought it was going to be overweight when I wheeled it round to oversize luggage checkin on 2 trolleys side by side. But the weight was bang on. I’d weighed it in a sling on one of those handheld scales to get it just right, standing on a chair to get it off the ground.
Ski bags are good for heavier stuff as less room in them but you can pack out the length and use the weight up that way.
On this kind of expedition I’d only use Briggs & Riley Baseline, which is my goto most trips, for hand luggage I am wheeling. B & R is heavy so you lose too much weight before you even pack them.
I’d strongly suggest IKEA Frakta *zip up* model. I think they’re about £4 each. Yup, IKEA blue and tough. Use 2 at a time for safety – the 2nd one is a pig to get on but worth it for safety. Put the closed zip downwards on the inner one and the outer one have the zip on top. That way if the outer zip bursts – never happened to me – an excellent chance it all stays inside anyway. They weigh close to nothing. They may well survive the trip and continue to be useable ongoing at home after – mine always have.
You could put a thin luggage strap round it too – wind it round and compress it – but not needed if doubling the bags works.
Just *stick* your details on it or sew a panel on and put a printout of your itinerary and contact phone on top inside both bags – get the checkin to put the label on the thicker shorter loop at the bottom of the bag as well – not the handles. tie the handles together with a bit of light string if you can.
If all else fails there’s trains and boats – you are not that far from Hamburg or Holland ports – or one way car hire – or drop stuff at new home and just get the hire car over the border back paying only the domestic oneway drop fee (which your company’s corporate car hire deal might include).
Cheapest source of really light luggage used to be that store at Marble Arch near top of Park Lane, market stalls, or could get lucky with TKMaxx or Matalan..In US Marshalls and TJMaxx for very big but light like Samsonite and other brands (all made same place in China I think).
I still favour the Ikea option though as worked a lot for me including long haul multistop.
Lady London aka the world’s worst overpacker
@Lady London ‘Lady London aka the world’s worst overpacker’, are you related to Mrs S?
@Lady London ‘Lady London aka the world’s worst overpacker’, are you related to Mrs S?
No, and Froggee will be very glad to have Mrs Froggee too 🙂
I forgot to say put the closed zips – the point where you pull them together with the ziptags – at the side (end) of the bag not on the top edge. Also for the inner bag.
When travelling with a car, I wanted to max out, too. Two strategies I used:
1. Get vacuum storage bags. Makes it a breeze to pack. You can easily max out the weight limit without buying a huge suitcase.
2. Get palette size industrial clear film from eBay. They are cheap.My thoughts are get some scales! If we’re talking about a serious bike turbo like a Wahoo Kickr or something (really heavy with the flywheel – especially with enough packing round it to hold its weight) and books (heavy in any quantity) then you may well find you are waaaay over the weight limit. Given you are already talking about having to give away stuff anyway, is there no way that driving to a port isn’t a better solution, especially if it’s the first of your journeys so returning any rental car is no issue? There are many other relaxing and trouble-free (and closer) ferry crossing alternatives than the s**tshow at Dover…
@ExpatInBerlin customs-wise bringing stuff into Germany is not the same as bringing stuff into the UK 🙂 (for people moving personal stuff, commercial items are of course a very different matter post brexit)
@Lady_London – I hadn’t even thought of Ikea bags but this could solve several problems and is of course a cheap and cheerful solution, many thanks!!
@can2 yes we love vac pac storage bags and they are proving useful thus far, we have loads as we used them when we first moved out here!@The_Savage_Squirrel – have been looking at scales on Amazon this morning. We have the Garmin Tacx® FLUX 2 Smart Trainer which fortunately is 23.6kg so we can use one of our 32kg BA luggage items for this. Fortunately no books (think @Froggee mentioned books when discussing moves back from HK and Bermuda!) Driving would indeed have been so much easier but unfortunately due to terribly timed work commitments we don’t have the time to do it within the logistical constaints of exiting our existing Berlin flat/moving into our new London flat. In hindsight we would have organised things differently but we have lots of moving parts with this move so just trying to do as best we can.
@Rui_N – thanks for this, I clearly need to look into this more and will keep it as an option for e.g. the turbo and bike.
More importantly you’ll need a new handle.
Could I suggest @ExExpatInBerlin?
@Froggee you could indeed! Hadn’t thought that far ahead 😅 (I write this from BER departures, glad to have been relieved of more than more own bodyweight in hold luggage!)
Do what i do and go to the check in desk early, and not say a word, and even if its overweight, dont say a word, and they wont either and just pass it all through. Works 99.9% of the time in my experience. YMMV.
Maximising is going to be a matter of density of items you pack more than anything else.
But if you really want to optimise obviously you want to be maximising the ratio of packed weight to total weight which means minimising bag weight. The obvious way to do this is with a MYOG bag made from 0.5 oz DCF. There are also plenty of off the shelf options using DCF, Ultra 200 or Skytex which will also be close to optimal. The Phi or Bogdan 100L+ bags will also be good options.
However, I don’t think you’d actually asking to optimise/maximise your packing and rather are after a different answer which we can’t help with until we know the average density of the items you wish to pack.
Do what i do and go to the check in desk early, and not say a word, and even if its overweight, dont say a word, and they wont either and just pass it all through. Works 99.9% of the time in my experience. YMMV.
The other 0.1% of the time you must be that guy with their suitcase open on the floor at check-in moving stuff to your hand luggage?
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