Moving house today... by air!

Alias on 2006-05-15T14:36:05

Careful planning. It's useful whether you are building large systems, or whether you are moving house.

I need to move house today. And with a little planning I've established that my local (regional twin-prop) airline only charges $2 for oversized luggage, and has no limit on the quantity as long as there the plane stays within weight limits.

I've been fairly careful over the last 3 years here not to accumulate any possessions that are either very large or very heavy. And I'm moving at the weekly low point for passenger numbers.

So I have my office and most of my life (including, shortly after this point, my main computers) packed up as around 120 kilos of luggage, and for about $250 (including taxi fare from the airport) I can move house to a different city 800km away in about 3 hours from door to door. :)

Farewell Lismore, Sydney awaits!

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tipping

slanning on 2006-05-16T10:36:44

Have you factored in the huge tip you'll have to give the taxi drive to load 120kg into his cab? :) (How are you going to carry that much on both endpoints of the trip?)

Re:tipping

Alias on 2006-05-17T05:51:19

Tip? What's a tip? We don't do those here, I think the preference is to just pay people relatively decently.

It turned out to be about 97 kilograms, which was a bit tricky to fit only a single trolley to get out to the taxis, but the taxi attendant removed the barriers to let me through, and then pulled aside a station wagon taxi, which fit everything in OK.

And of course, at both the entry and exit points, the meter stays running while loading and unloading. So it all went incredibly smoothly.

And I gave the guy a 10 buck tip (highly unusual by local standards) anyway.

Overweight luggage

roger.hale on 2006-05-17T03:54:48

Could this trigger a change in the airline's luggage policies?

(Now if you were moving the whole house this way, I bet they'd charge a little more!)

Re:Overweight luggage

Alias on 2006-05-17T10:59:58

I doubt it.

It's $2 a kilo... if the plane will take it.

If you bring more than they can handle, they just bump the excess until the next flight.

For this flight, a 100 kilogram self-propelled meatbag can ride the plane for $120. 100 kilograms of dead weight costs $200. (of course, they have to carry it though...)

So I guess you could keep dumping it and they'd keep taking it.

Of course, once the value of a possession falls very close to $2 a kilogram, or is too large to fit into the hold, land becomes cheaper. And if you wanted to move a couple of tons, it's MUCH cheaper :)

Re:Overweight luggage

roger.hale on 2006-05-18T03:08:36

Ah -- $2 a kilo. That makes sense, and scales well. I read it as a $2 flat fee, which sounded quite a miracle, and I wondered how they could possibly sustain it.