Dear Kayaking Community, I have a huge favor to ask of you. If you love traveling with your kayak, please take the time to submit this to United. United is one of the few US airlines that accepts kayaks; but they have recently put an asterisks on this policy that for all 737 planes, the kayaks have to be under 72 inches. This means we basically can't fly creek boats ANYWHERE as most flights have at least 1 leg on a 737 (these are actually quite BIG planes).

I've written a request that you can copy and paste into United's "customer care" form (see link at the bottom for this form). It will take a bit of time as you have to fill in some information for them, but if you ever plan to travel with a kayak, it will be well worth it! And if you don't like my letter, feel free to write you own!

Thanks for your help! And please feel free to share this with whoever you think might be interested in helping.

Here is the letter:

Dear United Airlines,

Let me start this letter by saying thank you for being one of the few U.S. based airlines that accepts kayaks.  The traveling kayaking world thanks you!  As you know, whitewater kayaks these days are nearly indestructible and are, for the most part, under 115 inches and under 50 lbs. So, all and all a reasonable item to accept when you consider how comparatively fragile windsurfers, surf boards and wave skis are.

With outfitters offering national and international kayaking trips in Nepal, Norway, California, Colorado,Costa Rica, Ecuador, Chile and Italy and many more destinations, it's definitely a great business endeavor to attract adventure traveler's to your airline.

I do, however, have a complaint with your sporting equipment policies: you currently do not accept kayaks over 72 inches on your 737 planes.  Most modern whitewater kayaks are longer than 72 inches.  And most flights to rivers around the world require at least one leg on a 737 plane.  Essentially, your policy of accepting kayaks is rendered futile to 90% of kayakers by this stipulation. 

Yet, according to your website, you do allow wave skis, surf boards, windsurfers to be up to 115 inches long and 70 lbs on your 737 flights. We aren't talking small United Express flights here, the 737 is a BIG plane.  This part is confusing to me.  If I can bring a 70 lb, 115 inch long wave ski on your 737 planes, why can't I bring my 45 lb, 105 inch long kayak on your 737 plane?

It's obviously not an issue of size/space. 

So I ask you, on behalf of the larger kayaking community, please allow kayaks up to 115 inches on your 737 planes.

This not only will make your policies consistent, but it will be advantageous to you. 

1.)more kayakers will book with United 

2.) you get $100-$200 extra per kayak on your plan 

3.) kayaks are made of hard plastic made to slam into rocks on the rivers and are extremely tough so you don't have to worry about damaging them like you do a surf board made of wood or polystyrene. 

Again, thanks for your pro-kayak stance, I will happily continue to fly United on any flight you allow me to check my kayak on.  Hopefully in the near future this will include your 737's.  Thanks for your consideration. 

Your name

Whitewater Kayaker

And here is the link where you can submit it:

http://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/Contact/customer/default.aspx