Air Canada renews Fly Your Bike program

advrider · 22 Martie

Air Canada is renewing its Fly Your Bike program for 2019, with service across North America and into select overseas destinations.

The Fly Your Bike program is a summer-long discount deal run through Air Canada Cargo, offering special rates for riders who ship their motorcycles through Air Canada and book passenger tickets at the same time. Departures and destinations are limited to airports where Air Canada flies its widebody jets.

That means you’re going to most likely leave from Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver or Calgary, although there have been reports of occasional availability from Halifax as well. Destinations usually include several European cities, including airports in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, and Switzerland. Morocco is also available, as the only African destination. In the past, there were also South American destinations, but due to problems with the import process, Air Canada has discontinued flights from Canada to those countries.

For 2019, Air Canada is supposed to be looking at adding destinations to the list. However, the announcement of any new routes is still a few days off, and that’s true for pricing, too. Air Canada hasn’t officially announced the finer details of its 2019 program, but we should know them by early April.

However, we can say that in the past, it cost about $1,000 CAD to ship your motorcycle across the country (plus the cost of getting your bike’s dangerous goods certification, required for the process, and plus your passenger airfare). Overseas, pricing started around $1,500 CAD, and once again, cost of the dangerous goods certification and your passenger airfare were extra. And of course, those are one-way prices; return prices may be different.

So who might find this deal attractive? Obviously, Canadians who want to transport their bike by air will want to check the deal out. Given the relative proximity of Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary to many Americans, these flight offers are also appealing to US riders who might want to ship their bike by air, as it’s much easier to ship your bike by air via Canada than it is in the US. Same goes for Euro or UK riders who want to visit North America—it may be much cheaper or simpler to fly your bike to a Canadian city and ride from there, even if your actual destination is elsewhere.

For more details, visit the Air Canada website, or call an Air Canada Cargo agent, and if you’re interested, stay tuned. More details on this year’s program should be coming soon.

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