So as I was enquiring about a carnet for a upcoming RTW trip starting next March I also enquired about air freight. At the minute I work in Jordan and come next March when my work is finished I’m off. The plan was to ride overland to Jordan but now I will only be back in the uk for a few weeks with not enough time time get to Jordan, also the uncertainty of ferry and entry via Israel.
So I asked for a quote Belfast to Amman
After I picked myself of the floor I read it again
Bike Transport Belfast -London. £2200
Bespoke crating £500
Air prep and delivery to airline £350
Export documents and licence £325
....... air freight London to Amman £10000

And then the fees Jordan side

Can someone tell me is this crazy expensive or the norm for airfreight. Looks like I’ll be overland gumball style to turkey to leave my bike with a friend and wait out the borders opening.

I don’t want to publish the freight company as I’m not out to give bad press to anyone


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Say thank you to Mr. & Mrs.Corona...

You are asking for prices into a region with a low offer of air cargo capacities in total. Touristic flights to middle east are still not existing yet and touristic planes second business is air cargo. Low offer + higher demand = higher prices per dimensional weight (Prices are calculated in a mix between weight and volume because empty volume means a financial loss of fully paid freight kilos to the air line)


Situation:
High consumer demand and still-lagging inventory are pushing prices right now. Up starting economies worldwide driven by a higher consumer and industry demand will raise prices this month more than last one.

Don`t forget that cargo volumes are still influenced by increasing e-commerce traffic - Amazon has 60% increase in sales by third party vendors.

Prices will reduce but questions is when...



+41% increase of air cargo volume in May 2021

+127% price increase per kilogramm compared to 2019

Freight prices Asia to West Coast US +151% compared to 2020

Freight prices Asia to East Coast US + 209% compared to 2020

Freight prices Asia to North Europe +600% compared to 2020

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Bikebase:

Air freight prices are very fluid and very volatile. Here's a bit of a primer about how things work when it comes to shipping a motorcycle by air.

1) Type of aircraft: A motorcycle can be loaded into a wide-body aircraft (a twin-aisle aircraft) without any disassembly or special packaging. All you need to do to comply with Dangerous Goods regulations is show up with less than 1/4 of a tank of fuel. The motorcycle will be put inside a container (a ULD, or Uniform Load Device) and the ULD can be handled by machinery. See the picture at this post: click here.

If you are trying to ship a motorcycle on a route that is only served by smaller single-aisle aircraft, prices increase exponentially, because the motorcycle needs to be disassembled, crated, etc. and loaded/unloaded by hand.

My guess is that there is no direct wide-body aircraft service between Belfast and Amman. This means crating, and transfers from one aircraft to another - both of which dramatically increase the cost.

2) Route Considerations: You will get the lowest prices on routes that have a lot of wide-body traffic (e.g. Montreal to Paris) where the passengers are tourists travelling on cheap fares. This usually results in the seats being full on the aircraft, but the cargo hold not being full. So, the carrier will offer attractive rates for low weight but high cubic volume freight, such as a motorcycle.

3) Frequency: This is what is upsetting the market right now when it comes to shipping motorcycles by air. Carriers all over the world have cut back their schedules because people are not travelling as much - but, there has been no corresponding decrease in demand for air freight (the boxes can't catch COVID, nor do they need to be vaccinated, so there has been no reduction in travel demand for the boxes in the belly of the plane).

Hence you have a steady, unchanged demand for freight shipments (unchanged since pre-pandemic) together with a massive reduction in freight capacity... this has caused dramatic increases in air freight shipping costs. I don't think we are going to see a return to pre-pandemic air freight costs until the quantity of flights returns to normal... and that might take a long time, especially for out-of-the-way destinations such as Jordan.

My suggestion: Contact a household goods moving company (what in the UK I think you call a "removals company") and get a quote from them. In addition, find out what carriers (if any) are operating direct wide-body flights into Jordan from your region, and contact them and ask for a quotation. Likely this will mean shipping out of London.

Michael

Thanks for the information, seems that this covid thing is ruining everything. I did get back to the company and negotiated a price of £3450 which is considerably cheaper. Riding to London will probably save £2000 and if anyone knows a Yamaha dealer that would have a crate for a T7 I may save on the crate as well. As you were saying there is not a lot of air traffic on this route so i may still look at riding to turkey and shipping from there, more research needed thanks for the info


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Hi Bikebase:

As you have suggested, riding it to London and shipping it by air from there will probably result in the lowest overall cost.

Riding to Turkey & shipping it from there might make for an attractive cross-continent tour, but once you figure in the cost of insurance, fuel, hotel & meals, I don't think you would save much money by riding the bike halfway there. Turkish Airlines has a pretty robust route structure, and they might well serve Jordan out of Istanbul, but you run a risk of encountering all sorts of logistics and regulatory problems when shipping out of Turkey, not the least of which is language. For what it's worth, I would not attempt doing that, and I have a really strong background in aviation (I'm a retired pilot) and I have shipped my motorcycle between continents many times. Istanbul is a massive urban agglomeration, the traffic there makes London look like a small village in the Yorkshire dales. It is not unusual to spend 5 hours to cross from one side of Istanbul to another... and that doesn't even include crossing the bridge to the Asia side.

If you ship out of London, at least you speak the same language as everyone on the ground, and you probably have a pretty good sense of what the rules are. If for some reason everything goes tits up in London, you can still ride home without spending thousands of pounds, dollars, euros, whatever.

If there is widebody service from London to Jordan, you might not even need to break down and crate the motorcycle - instead, just strap it on a pallet. Crating reduces the cubic size and could have a significant effect on cost if the price is determined by cubic size alone, but it is a massive PITA and has its own associated costs.

I suggest you inquire and find out whether the carrier would accept a palletized motorcycle, such as you see in the picture below.

Michael

Moto on Pallet

Hello

You are planning a RTW next march and are trying to get your bike from Belfast to Jordan?
Where do you go from there on your RTW?

If plan A is to expensive, go to plan B and start your RTW somewhere else on your planned route.

If you just want to skip europe, ship your bike within the EU on a truck.
Dublin-Athens for example, any truck shipping company can do that.

sushi

__________________
My RTW:
http://www.youtube.com/user/MrXt660ztenere

Hi sushi thanks for your input, Europe is not a problem I’ve done this many times, the problem is getting to the Middle East. I have no problem with the route next March, covid dependant, the problem I face is lack of time to ride across Europe, borders closed and lack of ferry traffic. I work in Jordan and would like to have my bike with me as there is so much to explore before leaving. As for cost, there is too expensive and there is trying to get the best deal. I am still researching to get the best deal.


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Thanks for the info, I think the riding to turkey is not happening now due to not enough time, I’ve only talked to one agent so far and not to any airlines direct, do you think that’s an option to do a self crate and delivery to the airline?


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How about flying the bike to Dubai and picking it up from there to take to Jordan - Dubai seems to get a huge number of flights with wide bodied jets even now - their origin though, I cannot say.

Alternatively, if you were born in Belfast then there is the option of riding through Iran, across the UAE and up through Saudi Arabia to Jordan using an Irish passport. Time wise you could truck the bike to Greece with a haulage firm and pick up the journey from there.

__________________
You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

Been in touch with Saudi, they are still closed as well, covid is a bind


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Talk to the airline cargo sales offices directly - they are the ones who know what kind of load factors (both by mass and by cubic size) their flights are running, and they are the ones who could advise you whether or not you could ship the bike uncrated at a cost comparable to a crated bike.

Keep in mind that a crate will add weight. If the carrier is not running physically full freight holds (meaning, if they are not cubed out), it won't matter to them if it is crated or not. But weight always matters. In other words, it's not uncommon for an airline to waive cubic charges to get business, but no airline will ever waive weight charges.

Plus, when you get into crating, you encounter other DG related requirements such as labelling, concerns about the battery and fuel level, etc. that you don't encounter when the moto is shipped upright and fully assembled. And there is a whole set of rules about the kind of wood needed for the crate - it has to be specially labelled and specially treated to ensure that insects & fungi are not accidentally transported because they had previously infested the tree the crate was made from.

I would try to avoid crating unless there is no other alternative. If you have to go the crating route, I strongly recommend you engage an agent who is familiar with transporting motorcycles by air.

Michael

Bikebase:

Just a postscript to all this discussion:

I'm in a not entirely different situation that you: my motorcycle is currently in Tunisia, where I had to abandon it at the start of the COVID pandemic in April 2020. I'm in Canada, and very much want to recover the motorcycle so I can go riding in Europe this summer.

But... even though I had high hopes of going there this month to pick it up (I'm vaccinated, flights are running Canada to Tunisia, ferries are running Tunis to France), I think I am going to have to postpone things until the fall because of the COVID situation in Tunisia. I'm concerned that the French are going to slam the door shut on entry from Tunisia without any advance notice - the Italians already have done so (except for their own citizens).

Although this COVID thing appears to have settled down a bit in some first-world countries, we're only at half-time in the show for lesser developed countries. There is no doubt that all hell is going to break loose in unvaccinated countries as a result of variant spread.

It might be a good idea if you re-evaluate the risks associated with trying to start a RTW trip this year. You could wind up in a situation like mine, where the moto has to be abandoned on very short notice and you end up taking a repatriation flight back to your home country (not an inexpensive exercise).

I know we all want to get back on the road again... but honestly, I don't think this summer & fall is the time for extensive international travel, especially to lesser developed countries.

Michael

Yes covid is ruining everything, my rtw isn’t starting until
Next March I’m hopeful if there’s no more spikes and countries realise that have to live with it and vaccinate by then it should be opened a bit more.


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so James cargo got a call, rode the bike to Heathrow, they prepared and boxed it and it arrived in Jordan 4 days after I arrived. that was the easy part. it took nearly 3 days to clear it through customs. The biggest problem was the carnet(triptik). there were very few customs officials that had experience of a carnet for a motorcycle arriving by air. so a lot of running about between departments looking for authority to release it. you cannot collect the motorcycle from cargo at the airport you cannot drive to the cargo area unless you are in a vehicle with a jordan plate(rental cars have green plates and are forbidden). it has to be cleared through customs, then you need to appoint an agent to transport the crate to another customs department in Amman city. This is extra cost, lorry fee drivers fee insurance for the journey from the airport. the agent will assign you someone to complete your release however they werent much help. I had a local friend who was with me and she believed they were trying to delay everything as an extra day in customs was an extra days pay for them. They also had no means to remove the bike and crate from the lorry. and finally my first page of the carnet was null and void after the customs official signed the export instead of the import.
I rode out after 3 days and very soon id forgotten about the bureaucracy.


cost for release Jordan side approx £400
I have some pictures, is there an easy way to attach them from my photos or do I still need to get a web address!!! if so no pictures .......... found out its easy on the phone no so on the desktop

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