How To Travel With Skates

Skating makes everything more fun, especially travelling! You can see the environment in an entirely different way than you would from walking and if you’re going to a place where bike rentals are unavailable, skates really are much more convenient than traveling with and other form of transportation. Imagine yourself on vacation but with your favorite hobby? Chances are, you won’t ever get bored on your wheels.

One of the most classic tried and true ways to carry your skates is by using the laces on your skates to tie them together in a bow (or however you’d like of course) and toss them over your shoulder. Over time of course, this does weaken your laces and if you skate hard, it’s likely you’re breaking your laces anyways so thankfully there are other ways to easily hang your skates. Skate leashes are commonly used with roller skates, but they work with inline skates as well and they are easy to attach all of your protective gear onto as well. Hooks are another underrated and very helpful tool for keeping everything together and some are large enough to fit your entire hand so you can easily carry your skates.

Skate bags and back packs are our favorite way to transport skates with all of our gear. Nowadays there are a lot of options with different sizes so that you can choose the best skate carrier for yourself. This of course is a biased opinion, but we have an IW skate bag that is perfect for carrying your skates and all of your protective gear in one go with a mesh pockets on the side that always comes in handy.

Now this can be tricky! Most airlines allow your pair of skates on as a “personal item”. We always recommend checking the rules and regulations of your airline. Each one is a bit different and or course if you are in smaller planes they limit even more with what you can bring on the plane without checking luggage in. We’re sure you’ve seen people on social media skating in the airport and although it’s tempting, we don’t recommend it… unless you can get away with it! The floors are amazing because they’re made for rolling luggage so yes, it feels amazing. If we had it our way we would just skate through the entire airport and even on the plane, but the TSA usually isn’t a fan. Although we know people who have done this!

From personal experience, they regularly have you do the switch-around-thing where they say “oh no you can’t have exposed wheels, you have to put that in your check-in bag” which is annoying and usually not true. They’re just making up rules because skates to non-skaters seem somewhat uncomfortable. So, knowing the actual real rules is the best way to avoid this scenario. We have a plethora of skate backpacks that carry skates, but it’s important to consider that the size of it is very close to a carry-on luggage. So, in our experience we believe the best way to fly with skates is by checking them in your luggage.