Two of us need to take our snowboards from Hong Kong to Tokyo in Economy in a few months and just need to clarify the charges.

As I understand it, there is no special policy for ski equipment and it just counts as your normal allowance, if you go over the allowance you pay the standard excess charges per kilo.

However, the charges seem extortionate - it is $20 per kilo on this route. So if we both take a bag each which is 20 kilos, and a snowboard bag at 20 kilos - it would cost us $400 in each direction. Crazy!

Assuming the above is correct, the only way we can do it for free is if we manage to pack both of our normal baggage into one case, meaning that we will only have two bags between us at 20 kilos each.

However in practice the two bags will actually weigh more like 25 / 15, so my question is: if we are travelling on the same booking, is the allowance 'shared' or 'pooled' between the both of us for a total weight of 40kg?

Many thanks.