‘Easyjet destroyed my bike’: pro cyclist posts photo of bike snapped in half after flight

Aqua Blue Sport rider Peter Koning found his bike split in half after a flight.

This story originally appeared on Cycling Weekly.  

It’s every cyclists worst nightmare: opening a bike bag after a flight to find thousands of pounds worth of carbon snapped in pieces.

That was the experience of Aqua Blue Sport rider Peter Koning, who got home after competing in the Four Days of Dunkirk to find his Ridley Noah SL team bike in two pieces.

Here is my team bike after @easyJet destroyed it. Now they are refusing to help me! #dontflyeasyjet pic.twitter.com/5geShgpf9S

— Peter Koning - Koersprêt (@nl_peterkoning) May 15, 2017

Understandably unhappy with the state of his bike, Koning tweeted a picture of the broken bike, saying that it had been “destroyed” by Easyjet, who were apparently now refusing to help him.

Koning’s next race is scheduled to be the Belgium Tour, which starts on May 24, which at least should be close enough for him to drive to from his native Netherlands.

After being contacted by Cycling Weekly, Easyjet issued the following statement:

“We were sorry about Mr Koning’s experience and have been trying to contact Mr Koning since 5 May to resolve this issue, but are yet to receive a response.

“We work closely with all of our airport partners to ensure our passengers’ bags are handled well and so are now investigating with our baggage handler what happened on this occasion.”

This isn’t the first time that cyclists have had problems while flying with Easyjet. In March a video emerged of baggage handlers dropping bike boxes off an Easyjet flight, although it is unclear if any bikes were damaged in that incident.