After two years of research, and procrastination, i bought a B2 in last year's Black Friday sale. Although I have an S & S coupled travel bike I needed my carbon cross bike with hydro disc brakes to do Paris-Roubaix sportive. I was concerned about dropping the fork from the frame and reinstalling but it worked out fine. It's a 54cm and I bought the B2-R for road bikes. Two months after purchase they released info saying the the B2-MTB, still undersize, would mean the fork didn't need to be dropped. Ah well. Oh, I spent quite a while trying to strap the fork to the top tube or down tube but in the end it fitted better just loose laying in the bottom of the case under the frame. Second tip, take the disc rotors off the wheels and store them in one of the end pockets which are protected by the rigid tray. Rotors often get warped in travel. I loved that the case is small enough for a regular sedan or hatchback cab and can be folded down into its tray for easy storage for those of us apartment dwellers. On my trip to Brussels last month I saved $400 CAD in bike fees with Air Canada ($100 per leg). Even the check-in staff at Brussels, where they are incredibly aware of what size cases bikes can go in, didn't question my "therapy equipment"! So, Orucase paid my bar bill for the fortnight! No mean feet in Belgium!
Bad idea. It goes with normal luggage on conveyor belts and manhandled in the usual way. Big bike boxes are conveyed manually and *should* be treated with care - ok if you're in the US, the TSA will probably open it and wreck it but they'll do the same with the Orucase B2. There's a massive advantage to keeping the integrity of your bike with a normal large bikebox, in most cases. Also, theoretically it's much less likely that the bikebox gets left behind -- I've frequently had my cases disappear for days (bike box on the same flight no issues). This is absolutely not a free lunch.
This works well for externally routed cables, some bikes you can't even remove the fork from the frame without cutting the hydraulics, so that's kinda lame... But for those that can this looks amazing.
1. Insurance? 2. If challenged to the point that asked to open and show “therapy equipment”…at what point do you personally cede to, ok, yip, it’s a bike? 3. Does a hard shell of the same dimensions exist? Providing the same space saving / fee efficiencies, but with actual impact protection? Just mindful of eg carbon wheels sat outboard of ones frame, quite exposed to the baggage handlers abuse as noted elsewhere.
I am pretty sure most airlines offer insurance for damaged goods, then again you can guess how "good" their customer service is. If challenged just say physio therapy equipment and show a picture of a bike on a trainer and say "indoor therapy" lastly 10k road bikes are delivered in card board boxes with the wheels on the side with styrofoam so this bag offers enough padding in my opinion after working in the cycling industry for years.
