Hi guys,
I am a bit of a lurker on this forum but I have appreciated a lot of the topics as they have helped me buy a couple of SUP's & other gear over the years. Cheers.
I am booked to do a surf boat trip in the Mentawai Islands in about a month but I am having some trouble getting some proper information about if I will have any trouble transporting my two SUP's over to Padang from Sydney.
I have two boards, a Naish Mana 10' (3.05m) and a JP surf widebody 8'8 (2.64m). I only really ride the JP these days but I am planning on trying to take the Naish Mana as well in case I manage to snap the JP in two on a reef somewhere.
Now my travel agent seems to think I will have no trouble getting the boards onto Garadu airways for the two flights Sydney - Jakarta & Jakarta - Padang, but as a double check I tried to check height restrictions online and found none. I then rang Garuda and got through to both Garuda sydney airport and their cargo section and they are both telling me that officially the boards will not get on the plane as there is a 3m length restriction on the Sydney - Jakarta flight and a 2m restriction on the Jakarta - Padang flight (smaller plane) - but, the cargo guy then said in a whisper 'maybe you should just turn up at the airport and they might get on'.
I have also read a few other forum posts in here and all experiences seem to be fine though for getting SUP's over there. Can you guys please let me know if you have any recent experiences getting 8'8 + SUP's onto Garuda? Any help appreciated. As you can imagine I am a little hesitant to pay for a 10 night surf boat trip if I will have no board to ride!
Cheers, Matt.
3m is generally the limit , international is ok for bigger boards but it's the connections is where you come unstuck . The 8-8 will be fine worst case if you are on a connecting flight on a small plane it will travel next flight on the bigger plane. You really don't need the mana in Bali.
Hi Matt
We did the same trip last year out of Perth, we flew Asian airlines Perth to KL then KL to Padang same in reverse on the way home, we had no troubles at all, 10 guys all with 2 sups each, we organised ahead to upgrade our baggage allowance I think form memory it was around $70 dollars, we had a stop over in KL but we were able to store our gear at the airport. Air asia was great...Cheers
Garuda is fine , did that trip with 9.6 and they don't measure .
Two things to lookout for
Your weight,
And the porters at Jakarta, don't let them touch your gear
Also check for ATMs very hard to get cash out in Sumatra .
Thanks for the comments guys. I am feeling a lot better about the trip over now. Booked in with Garuda and can't wait. Matt
moved back from Indo flying garuda...
10'3 from Jogja to Syd via Jakarta no problems with a crap load of baggage... if i remember correctly i had about 42kg with me....
internal flights in indo are on 737s. These don't have baggage containers so board should be fine internally...
Get the right person in Sydney, you'll be fine....
my 2 cents... could be different for you on the day though...
Hello I traveled to mentawai from melbourne to Jakarta and back with Garuda and found them fantastic in February 2013 .
That was my 5 trip and have flown on 3 different airlines and the worst was air Asia .
Have taken 4th trip a 9'6" and on 5 th a starboard pro 8'5" and had no trouble.
I think 9' might be the legal limit.
I think 35kg is limit plus carry on7kg.
SUP go insane over there but not so good when caught inside over reef when you carny duck dive .
