Quote:
Originally Posted by sushi2831
$1,500 for such a big container is almost free, only possible if the airline needs cargo to fill up an empty plane.
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Almost correct, but not quite. The trick to understanding how to get a very low price such as $1,500 lies in comprehending how aircraft get loaded.
For long range aircraft, you can choose any two of the following three options when loading the aircraft:
1) Fill the seats
2) Fill the fuel tanks
3) Fill the cargo hold
You can't do all three.
So, what you want to find is an aircraft with a full passenger cabin & a fairly high fuel load. That will generally guarantee that there will be empty space in the cargo hold. A motorcycle in a LD-6 container is, to the airline, the same as an LD-6 container filled with popcorn - relatively speaking, it weighs nothing*. If the airline has to move the empty container in any case - to redistribute containers to and from outlying bases - then they will be happy to toss a moto into it and pick up a little bit of money, rather than transporting the container empty and getting no money at all.
FYI, I flew my motorcycle from Toronto to Zürich a few years ago for $1,500.
Michael
* "It weighs nothing" means that if the aircraft take-off weight is 500,000 pounds (228 t), which is typical for a long range widebody, a 700 pound motorcycle is not much more than one-tenth of one percent of total aircraft weight.
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