Traveler's Warning - British Air

[Wark 1978]

Virgin have also changed their policy to be in-line with all the other major companies. For economy they allow only one piece of checked in baggage BUT they will still allow sporting equipment over that. I phoned them up and the woman that I spoke to said that a bogu bag and a shinai bag would be allowed as sporting equipment so I'm going to use them.

Watch out London - I'm coming for you!

[IronWarrior]

Instead of telling them they are shinai's, tell them it's hockey sticks or something instead?

[Tort-Speed]

Maybe it was the language thing, but long ago when from in Tokyo, I phoned ANA to ask if a Japanese harp (koto) which is far lighter but about the size of a standard surfboard could be checked in or carried aboard for a flight Tokyo-Los Angeles, was told
OK. But arriving at Narita, told it couldn't be done unless I paid bout the same price as my ticket to get it to CA. Nothing to do
but pay but arriving at L.A. luckily ran into a American ANA manager who, apologizing, arranged for it to come back with me free of charge. Just wanna say that Kendo gear being Japanese may not mean JAL etc.'d be more helpful/knowledgeable
than, say, Delta etc.

[dillon]

It's a spam-bot that has wholesale copy-pasta a previous post.

But anyway, with airlines it can be a bit of hit or miss depending on who you talk to. If things don't go your way, it's always worth asking someone else again. The best strategy I found was to play the meek so that if they let things slide they can feel like they've done you a favor. That usually works much better than trying to bully or threaten someone into doing what you want (they have training to thicken their skin against that). This may depend on local business cultures as well.

If you can't avoid a charge, do what you can to look surprised at first, downtrodden and finally resigned. Again, this plays on people's innate instinct to help other people (yes it exists). If it works, they will find some way to reduce the charge.

Also eye contact and a little smile (but not too big as that can be creepy or dumb looking).