Crash landing for Brit surfers

Mayday: UK surfers are in uproar after British Airways (BA) announced they will no longer carry surfboards. The ban comes into effect on Wednesday (November 6), and there won’t be an option to pay for carriage, something which has always been free with the airline. In response to this news the British Surfing Association has set up a petition to lobby the airline to reverse their decision.
Surfing is intrinsically linked with travelling, be it locally or long haul. Riding different waves is key to any surfer’s development, and international travel opens up an array of challenges for all abilities. Surfboards aren’t cheap however, so you can’t just buy a new one when you arrive at your destination. Furthermore there aren’t always hire shops, with most only offering learner boards anyway. Besides the relationship between surfer and surfboard is very personal, small variations in design can significantly impact upon performance – which explains why custom built surfboards are so popular the world over. Non surfers might not appreciate how large a hurdle banning surfboards on planes is; put simply, although BA is only one airline, the repercussions might have a huge impact on the surf industry as a whole.
British airways used to be at the forefront of travel for surfers, offering free transport of boards (which are classified as sporting goods), but more than that, in days gone by, the company ensured limited damage succumbed the precious cargo. In the past few years the quality of service has slipped, more and more boards have been damaged, if not broken. So what, you might say, the service was free, it’s a risk you take. The truth is however most surfers are willing to pay a reasonable fee for shipment if baggage handlers treated surfboards with respect. Just this January one of my own boards was driven over during transfer to the hold on a BA flight. The matter was resolved and BA reimbursed me for the damage, but the point is mishandled luggage should be nothing more than an occasional accident.
Sadly as numerous airlines (not just BA) treat surfboards worse than punch bags, some surfers have been taking the law into their own hands, filing false claims against the companies. Whilst it’s clearly bad karma, it’s safe to say that surfers arriving at the airport with pre-mangled boards, is far from an urban myth. Obviously the combination of hundreds of genuine claims compounded with a few bogus insurance scams, is enough to get any airline questioning the haulage of surfboards. So BA might not be quite as unjustified in their decision as the media has portrayed this week. Yet none the less they are being very unreasonable. If the company checked boards properly before take off, and then handled them with care in transit, where’s the problem. BA could even introduce a small fee to cover the expense of baggage handlers checking boards. So far the company are neglecting that the customer should come first. Statements by the company suggest surfers are merely two or three in every 100,000 travellers. Statistically this is probably true as most surfers don’t take boards to Las Vegas, but to some destinations during particular seasons surfers make up more significant proportions. Try flying to Morocco from London in January, I’d be surprised if there were less than 30 surfers onboard every flight.
Besides us ‘wealthy’ Europeans missing out on surf trips imagine the repercussions on local economies built around surfing. If we took 95 percent of the visiting surfers out of Newquay, you’d have a bankrupt ghost town – in less developed countries like Sri Lanka it could be far worse!
So, what can a bunch of surfers do? Well the British surfing Association are urging surfers to take a number of steps, the first being to sign an online petition at www.britsurf.co.uk. Besides this you can also join an online Facebook group, which you’ll find by searching under ‘British Airways surfboard ban’, finally surfers are asked to complain to BA directly. National Director of the BSA Karen Walton
said, "If everyone who surfs could take five minutes to go online and follow our recommended action steps then we will have a real representation of the swell of support for the reversal of this absurd decision.”
A number of surf companies have joined the cause boycotting BA travel, and at last count the petition was in the thousands. As judgement day nears, let’s all pray other airlines listen to our voice and don’t follow BA’s lead.