Best Shipping Method For Personal Effects?

[Dustoff]

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Not for the big stuff like household items, just all the personal things that we want to take along.

We are moving, at least for a few years, to the States and will be bringing all the cold weather clothing we have here which will make our baggage more bulky than heavy. Besides our hand-carried and single check-in luggage, an additional 100 Kg would likely do us nicely.

Any experiences out there? What are the best options?

Pay for extra baggage and lug them along? But I do NOT want to purchase a couple of huge luggage cases for a one-time use.

Ship air freight to arrive just before we do?

Do airlines still allow 'unaccompanied baggage' for a reduced rate if you have tickets with that airline?

I have tried calling a few of Korean Air's locations in BKK and LA but cannot get any useful information.

I am choosing Korean Air because we wish to leave out of Chiang Mai and are on their mileage program - also, their partner Delta flies into Salt Lake which is our destination.

We are open to any super travel agents that you may know of - it doesn't matter where they are since most larger ones will accept deposits to their bank acct or credit cards.

Help!

Dustoff

[craigt3365]

100kg is not much. I think I looked into this before and it was like $300-500 or so...depending on how you did it.

We have made several trips from the US where we take 3 suitcases each. 2 checked in, at 22kg each, and one (large) carry on...along with a small backpack. We head back to the US with empty suitcases. January 10th will be our 3rd time doing this. You can transport quite a bit of stuff this way...duffel type bags in Thailand are quite cheap.

[jfchandler]

A couple thoughts on this...

1. re packaging for your contents, as long as it's clothing and such, it's fine to use heavy cardboard type, U-Haul type moving boxes, the kind shippers use. Just make sure they don't exceed your airline's size dimensions... clothing's not likely to exceed the per item weight limits. And then make sure you use heavy, strong tape and/or cord to seal/secure those kinds of boxes. Those kinds of boxes are cheap, re-useable and fold flat when you're done with them...unlike suitcases.

2. In my experience, for Thailand to western U.S. cities, most international carriers seem to have a per extra checked luggage (or box) fee of somewhere between $110 and $150 U.S. per item, and each such item usually has the same 23 kg per item weight limit as regular checked items. I just flew on American Airlines, and although I didn't use it, their flight info said a customer could purchase something like up to 8 or 10 extra checked luggage items (for their fee, of course).

3. If you're making a flight connection from Chiang Mai to BKK enroute to the USA, make sure you know the checked luggage allotment for the Thailand domestic segment of your flight. Lots of people flying internationally and then continuing on domestically (or the reverse) get caught because their international baggage allotment usually is far in excess of the standard domestic flight allotment. An example of that would be flying on Air Asia from Chiang Mai to BKK, where they'd charge you a small fortune for all the excess luggage of the kind you're talking about carrying, and they of course have no connection or agreement with your international carrier.

4. The 100 KG or so extra luggage amount you're talking about carrying works out to about four extra checked bags...so you can probably figure about $500 in extra charges for the international carrier to take those (above and beyond what I assume would be your regular two 23 KG. checked bags provided free plus a 15 kg or so carry-on bag per person.). If you were a gold type frequent flyer on a lot of international carriers, many will provide a third 23 kg. checked bag per person for free as a FF perk.

5. You could check about freight shipping and or mailing costs for those kinds of quantity/weights, using the likely added extra airline costs as a comparison. I'd be surprised if you could do the shipping or mailing approach for less money than the extra checked baggage is likely to cost....

6. the other comparison to make, of course, is to value the U.S. $ replacement cost of the things you're looking to pay extra to ship, and determine whether it's more economical to leave the things here and then replace them when back in the USA vs. paying the extra costs to ship them....