OK, so we decided to go to Iberia on a bit of a short notice. And yes, we arranged to drop in on family in Montreal on the way (and on the way back!), and sure, we are dragging giant bike boxes, and one extra duffle bag to boot, and yeah, we are going to Porto and not Lisbon or Madrid or Barcelona. So airlines, what's your beef?

It's not really that the airlines have any problem with us. At least not beyond  some wanting to know in advance that those bike boxes are coming, in order to reserve space on board. It's more like they see us coming and are rubbing  their corporate hands in glee, as they prepare to fleece the hapless travelers. And each airline has their own set of pickpocketing tools. To get to Porto and back we have had to deal with four of them: Air Canada, TAP Portugal, Air Transat, and Westjet. You can see they are just making up their charges by guessing what might earn them the most. 

Of course if you do a basic search for some trip in something like Expedia, you immediately see it all laid out, as some flights to/from the same place will be two, four, or more times the price of similar flights. And some total times to get there can be two, four, or more times other durations. 

All that is grist for Youtube videos, or industry analysts, but we are writing here about what it has meant to us, for cycle touring. The underlying fact is that our Victoria-Porto return cost has come out to over $5000, and that compares to about $2000 and $3000 on some past European trips. What is going on?

We begin by looking at the various airlines playing with us, just within this one trip. To go outbound from Victoria to Montreal,  Air Canada got $955, while Westjet collected $765 to bring us back over the same route. On top of this, each wanted the same amount, $130, for the two bikes and one bag, But that's a 25% difference in charging between the two airlines, (admittedly in the reverse directions and on different days.)

Much more noticeable are the rapacious practices of TAP Portugal Airline. Most itineraries into Portugal end up eventually on TAP. For Montreal to Porto they got $1300 (one way, two people). That compares to $930 coming back the other way, with Transat. That's a 40% difference! What's more, TAP demanded (and got) $188 for each bike, and $110 for the checked bag  ($486)! Transat did the bikes and bag for $249 - not cheap, but fully half of the TAP charge for the same service!

All of the charges mentioned are what we came up with after extensive searching and twisting, to minimize the cost. But there is a limit to how low the cost can get, when so many astronomical prices are what you are facing!

Looking at the over $5000 air travel charge we got landed with this time, we began to look to the future, and what costs would be if we planned differently, and earlier. What we generally found was that it would be cheaper to book well ahead, to fly to a place like Frankfurt, or at least Madrid, not Lisbon, Porto, or Malaga. And of course, not dragging the bikes along would mean that we could easily and cheaply make our way to Vancouver to fly from, rather than Victoria, and then we would also not be eligible for outrageous bike charges from airlines. 

Twisting this way and that, the cost for us to reach Europe for cycling is still $4000-6000 for most variations. The rock bottom cheapest right now would be to book well ahead for Frankfurt, take the bus to the airport in Vancouver, and pick up our bikes at our friends in Leipzig. That would be $3250, which is still 15% more than the Grampies paid in 2022 when "Searching for the Meaning of Life".  Perhaps the universe is trying to send us a message? No, we prefer to believe that it is only Expedia.ca that is sending these messages!

Epilog

We compiled the figures for this page last night, from our actual bank records and from Expedia searches last night. Today I thought the boring all text page would be livened up by an actual frightening Expedia search. So I ran one just now -and lots of return trips popped up at $2,100.  ($4,200 for two). That is Victoria to Porto with little lead time - pretty cheap?  Now I really don't know what to think.  What's more, our friend Marsha wrote yesterday that we should lay over in Toronto, so she could come see us. The flight shown has 12 hours in Toronto.  Could have been great!

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