If you're a surfer, you know the risk of transporting your board by plane. Stories abound of people having boards snapped in half by poor handling. Still, if you're travelling to surf, there's little choice - it can be expensive to buy a new board at your destination, if you can even buy them at all.

So, we did what we can. WE taped pool noodles to nose and tail, wrapped them in clothes and bubble wrap and more tape, and put cardboard and bubble wrap around the whole board and the whole lot into a travel bag.

Plus, we were flying Etihad, a middle Eastern airline with a good reputation. Surely, surely nothing could go wrong?

Well.

It's so bad they may we may as well not even packed it in the first place. It's like they've shoved in in somewhere and slammed a door on the nose or tail. I opened it up and said - 'well, it's fucked'. And the stupid thing is that I didn't think to unpack it at the airport. Still, it says to contact them within three weeks if your luggage is damaged regardless, so I've submitted a claim and have to wait - it can take up to 28 days.

To be honest, I don't hold out much hope for compo. We've found a guy down the road that'll fix it - not with carbon fibre, but with foam and fibreglass, but that's okay - as long as it still rides well, which it should, I'll cut my losses and just surf.

It's sooo disappointing and I'm pretty angry about baggage handlers that clearly don't care about surfboards at all (they KNOW they're fragile - don't tell me that this was accidental). A lot of surfers reckon baggage handlers do it on purpose - they've seen some shitty stuff from the plane, watching their board be thrown, have baggage thrown on top of, the works. Airlines should take more responsibility but they don't. Really, they shouldn't say they CAN transport them if they can't guarantee they will be in one piece when they get to the other end.

We're in Somerset, so it was actually lucky we found a shaper only five minutes away that'll repair it for us. I don't want to pay for a new board and in fact I'll probably just leave it here so I've got something to surf when I come back. I'll save up and get a new board when I get back to Australia.

Luckily it's a couple of weeks before I get to surf so plenty of time to get it fixed.

With Love,

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