flatlander

The retail packaging is not the same as the shipping packaging, there is an over-pack on such items before they go into a warehouse and then a shipping container. That's why if you buy a slow cooker in a box from an online retailer, they put the retail box with the pretty picture on it inside a brown cardboard overpack before they give it to the courier company.

So if you do put the slow cooker in the hold, overpack it, either a cardboard box with some more packing material or in a suitcase or similar. The retail packaging should only be considered OK for carry-on.

PUCCI GALORE

Now this is fascinating as I want to do much the same myself. I think that if you unpack it, it would go in a hold-all as I would not want to pack it in the hold. What we do not know is if the interior is ceramic which will make a lot of difference to the weight. FWIW - I was given a soup maker for Christmas and I have carried that out to Alicante. Not quite in the same league I know, but without the packaging it did fine in my hand luggage.

AlwaysonBA663

My wife has successfully checked in a large rice cooker and a zaigel (a sort of UV heated table top bbq) with no issues on BA and Korean. Wrap it up well, ideally still boxed and with the soft packaging and it will be fine.

V10

I brought back 2 rice cookers from Japan with no issues. As far as I remember, nothing special was done packaging wise other than using the retail boxes they came in.

One has the most useless feature ever in that it plays Twinkle Twinkle Little Star when you start it cooking.

1010101

The extra packaging is as much about stopping the box getting wrecked as it is protecting the item inside, which is already usually well padded.

flatlander

It is not usually well-padded. Usually things like ceramic pots are placed into a thin-skinned cardboard box of exactly the right size to enclose them, and that provides little protection against external impact such as if they are dropped onto a hard surface. Internal pieces are padded against each other, but the display box does not provide good external impact protection. The assumption in the packing design is that rough handling will take place with the display package inside the overpack, and that after the display pack is removed from the overpack then it will be handled gently.

Even non-ceramics are not immune to breakage. Amazon shipped me a cast-iron pan in thin (single wall) cardboard box. The courier clearly dropped the (surprisingly heavy, I'm sure) box somewhere along the way and I received an innovative 2-part pan. A heavier overpack would have been required to avoid this problem.

Some items may be more generously padded inside a display box than I describe, but the strong tendency in packaging design is to minimise volume by padding once in the overpack, not each time in the inner pack.

Bastien003

A few years ago I carried a big and heavy ‘Le Creuset’ casserole from Bordeaux to London on an Easyjet flight as hand luggage.

As I went through security in BOD, the agent told me that it wasn’t allowed in the cabin as (quote) “it is heavy enough to smash the captain & first officer’s heads, kill them and take possession of the aircraft (!)”

Not joking here.

After 20 minutes of heavy discussions, I told the agent that unless she can prove me that the item sharp, explosive and/or liquid, I would take it on board. I was finally allowed to.

IncyWincy

Fascinating discussion.

The net weight is probably 6 kg, manageable especially if hold all placed on old fashion foldable trolley if needed. But the cooker is unlikely to make it into the "sizer" for hand luggage, because it is cylindrical and thus a few inches too fat.

Hence the question - how did the rice cookers make it?

CPH-Flyer

I once brought a children's chair as carry-on from Copenhagen to London.

https://www.traevarer.dk/stol-massiv-fyr

The only question at security was 'Why?' They had no objections though. At the gate they were also somewhat curious, but again no objections.


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aardvarkdave

As I've mentioned before on another thread, with some trepidation I took a full-length Yamaha digital piano (88 key keyboard and stand type, not full-on piano height!) on BA over Xmas. I checked it into the hold in the same box and packing that was used when the courier delivered it to my house. It was absolutely fine at the other end.

Gig103

I'm not sure they want you competing with the BoB service....