How To Travel By Air With Your Over Weight Camera Gear
Over the last few year i’ve been able to travel quite a lot to destinations such as central and south east Africa, Sri Lanka, Morocco and The Middle East.
On several of those occasions I was going on safari trips to places link Rwanda, Zambia and Tanzania and of course I was keen to take big heavy camera gear such as a 400mm, 500mm or even a 600mm prime lens.
But how do you do about packing this type of gear for international air travel when the usual carry on weight limit is only around 7 kilo grams?
Well the answer is…
Unfortunately, there is no right or wrong way or a one size fits all method of travelling with heavy and expensive cameras and lenses.
All airlines are different, some regions of the world are far stricter than others, for example I’ve found that for international flights middle eastern airports are way more relaxed when it comes to carry on luggage than compared to EU and UK airports.
When travelling in south and eastern parts of Africa, because of the type of vacations people are doing like hiking, adventure and of course safari trips, they are more used to seeing people transporting a lot of heavy camera gear than compared to other countries, so therefore they may, on occasions, be more understanding and lenient with the weight limits of your carry on luggage. While some smaller airlines even offer carry on weight upgrades to help with over sized or significantly over weight bags.
So first tip is to always check with the airline before travelling.
However, there are still so many things you can do to help reduce the weight of your carry on luggage.
I think the first and most important thing to consider is to be careful with the way you communicate with airline staff. Be polite, stay humble and behave in a reserved and conservative manner while checking in for your flight.
Not every airline will ask you to weigh your carry on bags but if they do and you know it’s way over the weight limit then simply explain whats in the bag and why it can’t be included with your checked in bags. Camera gear is expensive and can be damaged very easily while being loaded and unloaded on to aircrafts.
Never get aggressive, offensive or become a problem for airline staff. They are there to help and in most cases they will actually try and do what they can to find a solution. Becoming aggressive will probably be detrimental to your cause.
