Checking a bike as oversized luggage on Breeze Airways

I wanted to bring a bike to Utah on Breeze Airways and checked their website for baggage guidelines. They claim this for bikes:

• Hard-sided, padded bicycle cases must be less than 80 linear inches and weigh less than 70 lbs. Overweight and oversized bag charges still apply.

I believe packing a bike into a case or box that is less than 80 linear inches is probably impossible. Which led me to believe they probably don't actually require bikes to conform to their requirements. So I had the bike boxed into a cardboard box that was about 115 total linear inches and headed to the airport (SNA) and hoped for the best. (BuyMyBikes in San Juan Capistrano did a very nice job boxing the bike for me. They used a RAD e-bike box they had in the store.)

The gate agents didn't express any interest in measuring the box. They did want to weight the box which was difficult because it didn't really fix on their scale. So we held the box upright and balanced it while they weighed it. It was just over 50 pounds so they said they had to charge for an overweight bag and for an oversize bag. Two $50 fees. I didn't complain because I was afraid they would just tell me they couldn't take the bike at all.

After checking it in I had to bring it to the TSA oversize checkpoint where they cut open all the careful tape holding the box closed. I had brought extra tape to close it up again but they told me they didn't need it. They used their special TSA inspection tape to close it back up. I also explained that the bike was not electric even though it was in an e-bike box.

The most amusing part of the bike journey was that it came out directly onto the carousel in PVU.