Tuesday 14 June 2015
We had originally planned to catch the 8pm flight home, but decided we would try to get on an earlier flight so we would get into Hong Kong earlier. I visited a school, and Wayne went on a last ride around the island of Incheon then got the bikes ready for the home journey.
We rode our bikes from the Best Western Hotel right up to the airport entrance on bikes paths (about a kilometre) and then proceeded to find the place we needed to be.
Checked in and got our boarding passes, then packed the bikes up. The Cathay Staff were a bit concerned about the way we were packing them into the bags, but we assured them that would bikes would be ok and they seemed happy with this. The top photos show them all packed up ready to be put through the system, then the proverbial hit the fan.
We carried the bikes to the over sized baggage place, whose staff looked at them and decided that they would not take them in the packaging they were in and insisted they needed to be in a box if they were to handle them.. (No one actually got off their bums to look at them closely or to inspect the heavy duty plastic they were wrapped in). We then carried the bikes back to Cathay check in, who were now trying to figure out what we were going to do. They suggested we go and have them wrapped at the wrapping service, which we decided was not going to be any better than having glad wrap wrapped around the bikes. They negotiated with the baggage handlers that we would take the bikes to somewhere else on a lower floor where the bikes would be loaded straight onto a truck or something. We then carried our bikes about another 200m to an elevator and were just about to get in when the staff member received a phone call saying that the bikes needed to be inspected by the oversize baggage handling people. So, back to them.
Wayne took the bikes into the inspection room, they then decided the inspectors needed to come out of the room and inspect the bikes. (Middle photo) and place stickers on the bags to say they have been inspected. Meanwhile the Cathay staff member was constantly on the phone trying to sort this out. After inspection, the bikes were going to be taken to the direct entry, so we placed them on a trolley and the Cathay staff would look after it for us. All this took about an hour and so we left our bikes in the care of the Cathay staff, hoping we would see them in HK.
It was now time for us to get through to our boarding gate. Wayne went through the preliminary check no problem, then my turn - blocked - apparently there was no record in the Korean system of me entering Korea 10 days before. So - Wayne continued through and I went back to the check in counter, almost in tears after all the drama with the bikes and now me. Cathay quickly sorted me out and sent me through the priority gate for the normal airport security which was a very short line. Ended up getting to the gate before Wayne and then boarded and headed home.
And, they took a while to come through the baggage handling, but we were very relieved to see our bikes in Hong Kong. Thank you to Cathay for going beyond expectations on helping us with our bikes, to Incheon Airport baggage handling department - not impressed - think out of the box and problem solve to help people. leaving our bikes behind was not an option.
Got home all safe and very tired. A great ride across a country, Korea, we will be back!
Top Tips on riding in Korea.
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