Airline costs for excess luggage

[Lyris]

OK, so anyone know how much it'll cost to take a computer (standard size tower) over to Poland?

Normally I travel light so I have no idea what this involves, but this time I'm heading out to a director's home to finalise the colour grading of a film, so a laptop won't do!

And normally I'd weigh and measure it first rather than ask a forum, but it's a pain in the backside so I was wondering if anyone has done something similar first...

[abigsmurf]

A PC will not stand up to baggage handlers, I'd strongly avoid putting it in a suitcase. Phone your airline, see if you can get it handled as freight/fragile

[Flabio]

We flew a PC out to Korea about a decade ago for a trade show. It turned up with a massive dent in it, and the fans no longer worked.

You really do have to freight these things.

[Lyris]

Dammit. My plan was to pack it really, really well with tons of bubble-wrap, the works. You still think even that's a no-go?

Obviously I would take the hard disks out and take those as hand luggage, in case the worst really did happen...

[demon9k]

Just did the same thing yesterday. Packed a dell tower into my suitcase, put it in jumpers and then tons and tons of bubble wrap. Took the hard disc in my carry on. Came out the other side with no problems.

[Lyris]

Would you mind telling me what the financial hit was?

[abigsmurf]

A PC weighs around 10kg and most non-budget flights give you 20kg (obviously check this, excess baggage is insanely expensive).

[Flabio]

Just bear in mind that luggage insurance is probably not going to cover any damage to it, as it's not really the kind of thing they expect you to be putting in the hold...

Why does the chap you're visiting not have a suitable PC himself?

[Lyris]

He doesn't have a PC at all (he's a film director who deals with celluloid, not pixels ) and even if he did, it would take away from valuable time to have to set up another system.

Thanks for the tips everyone! I'm sure it's doable.

[demon9k]

A PC weighs around 10kg and most non-budget flights give you 20kg (obviously check this, excess baggage is insanely expensive).

This, we had 23kg with klm and the whole luggage came out to 22.9kg with some other clothes etc packed around it. I took it from Manchester to Amsterdam to China then onto another city in China. Like I said previously the only concern I had was with the hard disc which I took in my carry on. However the PC we took was cheap so I wasn't overly concerned either way.

[EvilBoris]

Depending on how big the tower was and who you were flying with you could actually take the computer itself on as hand luggage.You could take a checked luggage bag swell with everything else you need and even pack the PSU and optical drives in to reduce the weight of the tower.

The meanest of the budget airlines allow 55x40x20 and 10KG of hand luggage.

[Anpanman]

Just did the same thing yesterday. Packed a dell tower into my suitcase, put it in jumpers and then tons and tons of bubble wrap. Took the hard disc in my carry on. Came out the other side with no problems.

Aye, if you pack it well should be no probs, ferried electronic gear loads of times including the PS3 back from Japan & always take two external HDD`s with our PC backups with me in my suitcase - never had any problems.