Flying With Your Helmet and Gear: Airline Rules for Riders

Fifteen kilos of armour, a helmet the size of a beach ball and an airbag vest with a compressed gas cartridge in it. Getting your riding gear to Asia is a solvable problem, and one item on that list can get you stopped at security.

The bit nobody plans for

People spend months choosing a tour, comparing routes and worrying about whether they are fit enough, and then discover four days before departure that a full set of touring gear weighs more than the airline’s entire checked allowance.

It is an entirely solvable problem and it has a handful of specific traps in it, one of which is genuinely serious. Here is the whole thing.

The helmet, which is easier than you think

A motorcycle helmet is not a prohibited item and it does not need to go in the hold. Most airlines will let you carry one on board, and a large number treat it as an additional personal item rather than counting it against your cabin allowance, on much the same logic as a coat or a laptop bag.

“Most” is doing work in that sentence. Policies vary and low-cost carriers are stricter than full-service ones. Check the specific airline’s page rather than assuming, and if you cannot find a clear statement, email them and keep the reply on your phone. An agent at a gate with a written policy in front of them is a different conversation from an agent making a judgement call.

Take it as carry-on wherever you can. A helmet is expensive, its protective value depends on it never having been dropped, and a baggage handling system is a machine for dropping things. A helmet that has taken a serious impact in a hold, even without visible damage, is a helmet whose foam may be compromised.

Practical tips: carry it in a proper helmet bag with a shoulder strap, stuff your gloves and neck tube inside it so the space is not wasted, and put it in the overhead locker on its side rather than resting on the crown.

The gear that goes in the hold

Jacket, trousers, boots and armour are the bulk of the weight, and a full textile touring set with armour in it will run somewhere between eight and fifteen kilos depending on how serious your kit is.

The oldest trick in the book still works: wear the heavy items. A touring jacket worn onto the plane weighs nothing against your allowance, and boots on your feet are boots you are not paying excess baggage for. It is uncomfortable for twenty minutes at check-in and completely fine once you are through, because you take the jacket off and put it in the overhead locker like a coat.

Take the armour out of the jacket and pack it flat if you need the space; it stacks much better separately than it does bulking out the sleeves.

The other decision is soft versus hard luggage. A soft holdall packs into odd shapes and squashes into a support vehicle better, which matters at the other end. A hard case protects better in transit. Most experienced riders end up with a soft bag and accept that a jacket does not need protecting.

The airbag vest problem

This is the one that catches people out and it is worth reading properly, because it is not a matter of airline discretion.

Mechanical airbag vests deploy using a small compressed gas cartridge, usually carbon dioxide. Compressed gas cylinders are dangerous goods under aviation rules, and the rules that permit small cylinders for things like life jackets do not automatically cover motorcycle airbag systems.

The practical position is that you generally need the airline’s prior approval to carry an airbag vest, in either cabin or hold, and the answer varies by carrier. Some will accept it with the cartridge removed and packed separately, some will accept it with documentation, and some will simply refuse.

What you must not do is turn up hoping. A cartridge discovered at security is confiscated at best, and at worst it is the start of a long conversation while your flight boards. Contact the airline in writing, well in advance, and carry the reply.

Electronic airbag vests without a gas cartridge sidestep the problem entirely, but they contain a lithium battery, which has its own rules.

Batteries, which have their own rules

Anything with a lithium battery goes in the cabin, not the hold. That is not a preference, it is international regulation, and it applies to your intercom, your action camera, your heated gloves, your battery packs and your GPS.

Spare loose batteries and power banks must be in carry-on with the terminals protected, and there are capacity limits above which you need airline approval. Heated gear batteries are the ones people forget, because they think of them as clothing rather than as electronics.

Check the watt-hour rating on anything substantial. Most rider kit is comfortably under the threshold; large camera batteries and some heated jacket packs are not.

What absolutely cannot travel

Aerosols and flammables. Chain lube, brake cleaner, contact cleaner, WD40. None of it flies, in either cabin or hold, and all of it is available in Chiang Mai for a fraction of what you paid at home. Leave it.

Fuel of any kind, obviously, including an “empty” fuel bottle that has ever had petrol in it. The vapour is the problem, not the liquid.

Tools go in the hold and not the cabin. A tyre lever, a multi-tool with a blade, a set of Allen keys, a torque wrench: all of these are fine checked and none of them will pass security in a rucksack. This is the single most common way riders lose kit at an airport, because the tool roll lives in the tank bag and the tank bag becomes hand luggage without anybody thinking about it.

Aerosol sunscreen and aerosol insect repellent count as aerosols. Take the pump versions.

The weight maths, honestly

A typical full set for a two-week Asian tour, packed sensibly, looks something like this: jacket four kilos, trousers two, boots two, armour and back protector one and a half, helmet one and a half, gloves and small items one. That is around twelve before you have packed a single shirt.

Standard economy checked allowance on many long-haul routes is twenty-three kilos, which leaves you eleven for everything else and is entirely workable if you wear the jacket and boots. It is not workable if you also intend to bring a second pair of boots and a laptop.

Two ways to buy headroom. Pay for the extra bag in advance, which is always dramatically cheaper than at the airport. Or check whether your airline’s frequent flyer tier or fare class already includes a second piece, because plenty do and people rarely look.

The alternative: do not bring it

Worth considering seriously rather than dismissing, particularly for a first trip or for a pillion.

Most decent operators in Asia carry gear. We supply helmets, jackets, gloves and knee guards, which covers a rider who does not want to fly with a full kit and covers a passenger who does not own one. The gear is sized, maintained and appropriate for the climate, which is the other point: a heavy European jacket built for autumn in Yorkshire is not the right thing for thirty-five degrees in Isaan anyway.

The two things worth bringing regardless are your own helmet, because fit is personal and a helmet that does not fit properly is worse than useless, and your own boots, because nobody enjoys ten days in somebody else’s footwear.

Buying at the destination is the third option and it is viable in Thailand. Chiang Mai and Bangkok both have proper motorcycle shops with real brands at prices that are often better than at home, and a mesh jacket bought locally will be better suited to the climate than anything you brought.

Insurance for the kit itself

A full set of touring gear plus a helmet plus an intercom is a couple of thousand euros of equipment, and standard travel insurance covers checked baggage at limits that are frequently much lower than that, with a per-item cap that will not cover the helmet on its own.

Check the single item limit rather than the total. If it does not cover your helmet, either carry the helmet on board, which you should be doing anyway, or arrange specific cover.

Photograph everything before you pack it, keep receipts for anything expensive, and know that a delayed bag is far more common than a lost one. Which leads to the next point.

What to do about the bag that does not arrive

It happens, and on a tour with a fixed departure date it is a real problem rather than an inconvenience.

The mitigation is to split the kit. Helmet, gloves and one set of base layers in the carry-on. Jacket worn. That way, if the checked bag is a day late, you can still ride day one in supplied trousers and boots rather than sitting in a hotel.

Tell your operator immediately rather than at the briefing. A tour company in Chiang Mai has dealt with this before, knows which shops open early and can usually put together a workable set within a couple of hours.

And build in a buffer day. Arriving the day before a tour starts is standard advice for jet lag and acclimatisation, and it doubles as insurance against exactly this.

Coming home with more than you left with

The return leg has its own trap, which is that people buy things.

The specific rider version is buying gear in Thailand, which is tempting because it is cheap and well suited to the climate, and then discovering the return flight allowance is the same as the outbound one. Weigh it before you get to the airport.

The other one is anything with a battery bought locally, which needs to follow the same cabin rules as the ones you brought, and anything liquid over the cabin limit, which includes the bottle of local spirits somebody gave you at the farewell dinner.

Choosing gear for the climate you are going to

The packing question is downstream of a bigger one, which is whether the kit you own is the kit the trip needs. A great many riders arrive in Asia with gear chosen for a completely different climate and spend the fortnight suffering in it.

For a Thai, Lao, Cambodian or Vietnamese motorcycle tour the answer is mesh. A well-armoured mesh jacket and ventilated trousers, with a thin waterproof shell rolled up in the tank bag for the afternoon storm. A four-season laminate jacket with the membrane bonded in does not breathe usefully at thirty-five degrees and ninety percent humidity, whatever the marketing says, and wearing one for eight hours is a genuine heat-stress risk rather than a comfort preference.

For the Himalaya, Tibet, Mongolia or New Zealand the answer inverts. You want a layering system with a proper windproof outer, a thermal liner and gloves that are actually warm, because those routes cross passes where it is close to freezing at dawn in the middle of summer.

The trips that need both are the multi-country ones that start in Chiang Mai and end up at altitude, and they are the reason the packing list on a thirty-day motorbike tour is longer than on a ten-day one.

The honest conclusion for a first trip is that if your gear is wrong for the destination, leaving it at home and using supplied kit or buying locally is better than carrying the wrong thing halfway round the world.

Two panniers, or a bag in the van

The other variable that decides how much you can bring is whether the trip is supported.

Self-supported means everything lives on the bike, which in practice means two panniers and a roll bag, and which imposes a genuine discipline: one riding outfit, two changes of civilian clothes, a wash kit and nothing else. People who have done long unsupported trips get very good at this and tend to be slightly evangelical about it.

A supported trip removes the constraint entirely. The luggage goes in the van, you ride with a tank bag, and you can bring a proper bag with a second pair of shoes and something to wear to dinner in it. That is not decadence; it also means the bike handles better, because eighty kilos of luggage on the back of an adventure bike changes the way it steers and brakes far more than most riders admit.

It is worth checking the actual limit before you pack, because most operators state one. It is generally generous and it is not infinite, and a support vehicle carrying twelve people’s spares, tools, water and fuel has less room than you would imagine.

The one thing to keep on the bike regardless is the day bag: waterproofs, water, sun cream, documents, phone, and anything you would be unhappy to be separated from if the van takes a different route through a town. That happens more often than people expect on a big biking tour, and the van is not always five minutes away.

The short version

Helmet in the cabin, in a proper bag, with the gloves stuffed inside. Jacket and boots worn onto the plane. Armour packed flat. Tools in the hold. Batteries in the cabin. Aerosols left at home. Airbag vest cleared with the airline in writing before you go, or left at home.

Do that and the whole subject takes half an hour of preparation and never troubles you again.

Shipping the gear ahead, and shipping the whole bike

Two options at the far end of the scale, for completeness.

Sending a box of gear ahead by courier to your hotel or to the operator’s office works, and a few riders doing long trips do exactly that. The costs are real, the customs paperwork on used personal effects into Thailand is usually straightforward but not guaranteed, and the failure mode is a box sitting in a bonded warehouse while you start the tour without it. If you do it, send it three weeks early and to a business address with somebody who can chase it.

Shipping your own motorcycle is a different order of undertaking entirely. Air freight from Europe to Bangkok runs into four figures each way before you have touched the paperwork, sea freight is cheaper and takes weeks, and both require a carnet de passage, which is a customs guarantee document that ties up a substantial deposit against the value of the bike for the duration.

It is worth it for a rider crossing continents on their own machine over months. It is emphatically not worth it for a two-week guided tour where the operator has a maintained fleet sitting in a workshop in Chiang Mai with somebody who knows how to fix them.

The middle path that most people arrive at is: bring your helmet, bring your boots, bring your gloves, and let the rest be somebody else’s problem. It is the cheapest, lightest and least stressful answer, and it is the one riders converge on after their second trip.

Riding Asia for real

Every Big Bike Tours departure can supply helmets, jackets, gloves and knee guards, so a rider who would rather travel light is not disadvantaged, and a pillion who does not own gear is not a problem. Luggage travels in the support vehicle rather than on the bike, which means you can bring a proper bag rather than trying to fit a fortnight into two panniers.

If you are weighing up what to bring for a specific route, the ten-day Amazing Thailand and the fifteen-day Real Himalayan Ride sit at opposite ends of the climate range and need completely different kit lists. Have a look at the full tour range, and message us on WhatsApp before you start packing for a guided tour: we will tell you what the weather actually does on your dates and what you can safely leave at home.