How do you carry golf clubs on an aircraft?

It may seem an obvious question to those of you who travel regularly and who’ve done it all before, but for those new to travelling with golf clubs it’s not quite so obvious.

So how do you travel by air with golf clubs?

Now of course the golf clubs, presumably with your new golf travel bag (if you’ve been reading our golf travel bags website) need to go on the plane. However there have been many occasions where an avid golfer has been extremely reluctant to part with their clubs and have sought to take their golf clubs right onto the plane with them.

This is known as “cabin baggage” and unfortunately it’s not allowed to take a golf travel bag onto the plane as cabin baggage. All cabin baggage is inspected and if you try it will usually be rejected as cabin baggage, and you may not get to take your clubs with you at all.

Golf clubs are too large and too heavy to qualify as cabin baggage. They will not go in the overhead lockers and it is not allowed to carry unstowed baggage in the cabin.

Rather you need to check the golf clubs in when you check yourself in, and the golf clubs go in the storage holds (unless the baggage handlers forget to load them, but that ’s another story again.) More on Putting Golf Clubs On The Aircraft

There are also collapsible golf travel bags. Are they any good?

We have already mentioned one of the problems with hard golf travel bags. They are a great travel bag, but they are a …….. to store when you get home. Too big and too hard, they can’t be folded up and they seem to get in the way of everything.

Is there a compromise?  A travel bag that protects your golf clubs as well as a hard case but doesn’t have the problem with storing the case?

There has been a solution to this problem which has been manufactured in the past called the Golf Telebag, a telescoping golf travel bag that is designed to allow it to collapse down from it’s full size to around half it’s length for storage. More on Collapsible Golf Travel Bags, A Good Compromise?