PoleVaultPower.com

It might be useful to have a place where people could share what they have learned about some of the issues (travel, accommodations) associated with participating in the Masters National Championships to be held in Hawaii in August 2005. I felt this could be that place.

To start the discussion, I have been looking into transporting my poles. I know of the link on PVP that provides info on this topic, but the two airlines I might use are not covered. These are Hawaiian and Northwest.

I have contacted Hawaiian and the person I talked with checked with their supervisor and provided the following information. By special arrangement, they would accept it as wind surfing equipment which has a charge of $100 each way. However, since this is a non-standard item, it has to be approved and notes made of that approval at time of booking of flights. Since I wasn't ready to book my flights at the time of the call, I don't have that guarantee. There is no guarantee the ‘supervisor’ at the time of making the booking in the future will approve this. I haven't been able to determine anything about Northwest yet.

Does anyone have suggestions about use of shipping companies? Do you have any personal experience with any company? The names that come to mind (but I haven't checked with yet) include:
Federal Express, Airborne Express, DHL and BAX Global.

Existing topics and links include:
http://www.polevaultpower.com/airlines/
http://www.polevaultpower.com/forum/vie ... php?t=2379
http://www.polevaultpower.com/forum/vie ... php?t=2705
http://www.polevaultpower.com/forum/vie ... php?t=3217
http://www.polevaultpower.com/forum/vie ... php?t=4919

I've done some basic research on FedEx, need to do more, but there seems to be limits on the length of the packages they accept, 9'.....need to contact the freight division, but the estimates for delivery time from California is 11 days....

I think I am going to pass on the meet because of the difficulty of getting poles there....

Company used to be called Menlo Forwarding but was acquired by UPS, it is now called UPS Supply Chain Solutions and they can handle poles for a reasonable cost and deliver them in a reasonable window of time:

http://www.ups-scs.com/transportation/n ... eight.html

or call 1-866-696-3656

preliminary info suggets they can get them there in 2-3 days....cost isn't way out of bounds, helps if you have a company account.....

Tried DHL and I got all kinds of conflicting information....didn't give me a warm and fuzzy!

FedEx was way out of bounds on cost.....

So far here is what I have found:
* DHL sent me to their subsidiary Danzas who then told me they can't ship for private individuals.
* Airborne Express is now DHL, so above applies
* FED Ex has a maximum length limit of 124"
* UPS has a maximum length limit of 108"
* Emory Air Freight became Menlo Worldwide became UPS Supply Chain Solutions and they can ship my 15'4" pole tube on cargo airplanes. Private residence to private residence is $210 each way, however if I deliver the tube to their facility on my end, I can save $60 bringing the price down to $150 each way. They fly out of LA and I live near Portland, Oregon so I would deliver the tube to Portland, they would truck it to LA and fly it to Honolulu. Probably need to allow 1 week for shipping to be sure it is there when it is needed.
* I have not yet called BAX Global, but when I spoke with them in the past, they said they would only deal with businesses, not private individuals.

The University of Hawaii travels to the mainland frequently with Hawaiian and United Airlines. As long as it is a big plane, they haven't given us problems with our pole travel.

All planes coming to Hawaii are generally big. However, all planes coming into Hawaii come from major airports. The problem is getting to a major airport.

Good luck with getting your poles to Hawaii.

There might be a slight possibility of borrowing poles from one of the coaches here in Hawaii, Joel Flores. You may e-mail him at joel@lava.net.

However, UH does not want to lend or rent out their poles.

If there are enough vaulters, perhaps I can talk UCS, ESSX, or Pacer to sponsor a pole rental program. I'm not too optimistic about his however.

Spencer Chang, MD wrote:The University of Hawaii travels to the mainland frequently with Hawaiian and United Airlines. As long as it is a big plane, they haven't given us problems with our pole travel.

Did the airlines accept this as baggage? Or did they transport it as Cargo? I haven't actually talked with an airline rep to ask this specific question, but I think it may play a part in this whole situation. Also, I'm guessing a university is looked at by the airlines as a business rather than an individual and that can make a difference. If more of these questions can be answered, it may save us all a lot of hassle for years to come.

Baggage. I don't know how much more we paid. You may contact head coach Carmyn James or Associate Coach Andy McInnis at:

carmyn@hawaii.edu
amcinnis@hawaii.edu

to get more info.

What worked for us should work for you.

Here is some good news for me that may be useful to others regarding transport of poles by airlines. I wrote to Northwest Airlines, Luggage Service Online Support, and got this reply.

Being a person who worries about details, I wanted to see the document that contained this info. I did a search for some key words and limited the search to NWA web pages and got a link to a pdf document that makes these statements explicitly. You can find and read it for yourself at http://www.nwa.com/plan/contract.pdf. Look on pdf page number 60. Note this correction, as of 7-7-05 it is on page 63. The best thing to do is to search for "pole vault" and that will take you directly to the page.

So, since my flights are on 757-300 planes, I can ship my pole tube for $80 each way. Yes, it does cost $160 round trip for my poles, but that is better than the previous best shipping costs I was able to come up with. I still have to call to find out what "prior arrangements" must be made. I'm hoping all that entails on my part is getting the pole tube there earlier than would be required for normal baggage check.

- master