The relationship between airlines and surfers has always been a rocky one thanks to high surfboard baggage fees and carelessness of checked boards.
Yesterday, Alaska Airlines announced its $1.9 billion purchase of Hawaiian Airlines—who’s gotten sh*t from the surf world more than once—in a merger that will take over a year to close.
And from what Alaska Airlines told us today, it sounds like good news for surfers and their surfboards.
Alaska Airlines announced the merger in the post above yesterday and captioned it:
“Excited to combine with @HawaiianAirlines to bring local care and global reach to travelers throughout Hawai‘i, the West Coast and beyond.”
While Hawaiian Airlines has historically enforced exorbitantly high surfboard baggage fees, Alaska does not.
Today, we asked Alaska Airlines if Hawaiian would adopt its surfboard fee policy in the merger.
Here’s what a rep said:
“Hawaiian’s baggage fees will fall in alignment with Alaska’s policy once the merger is complete. We don’t expect that to happen until sometime in 2025, it is a long process.
They added that they “couldn’t confirm” the exact number, but “based on the way our merger went when we took on Virgin, the Alaska baggage policies would apply to the Hawaiian flights.”
Sounds like great news for surfers.
The proof is in the prices.
Hawaiian’s surfboard fees vary greatly depending on weight and route.
They range from $25 to $95 for one-way inter-island flights. For North American and various international routes, surfboard bag fees start at $75 and go as high as $475 each way.
Yikes.
Meanwhile, Alaska Airlines is a heck of a lot more reasonable with its surfboard fees and “accepts sports equipment items as checked baggage.”
According to the rep, surfboards are:
“Subject to standard checked baggage service charge. $30 for the first bag, $40 for the second.”
And yes, that’s for two boards in one bag.
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