Taking car tyres as checked-in baggage
 

Didn't think this far ahead and honestly, I'm a bit worried, but my dads flying back to ISB on EK-612 in a few hours and since we were getting a good deal here, we bought 4x Continental tires (245/45/R17) for our car back home, two tires are taped together and wrapped in transparent plastic, see the picture below:
https://u.cubeupload.com/murtaza12/20170824205317.jpg

My question here is, will these be accepted at check-in or will they refuse to carry them?
They shouldn't have an issue being scanned by security since the plastic wrapping is transparent and you can easily see that they're just tires and nothing else.

I've reached out to EK on Twitter but still waiting for a response.

However, I thought I'd post here and ask if any of you frequent EK travellers have had experience taking something this large and irregularly shaped?

All replies will be appreciated.
Regards,
murtaza12
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On a side note, EK did something very nice for me today. I had forgotten to book CD on my dads booking and I booked a car on the website about an hour ago, and since there's less than 12 hours left for the flight, call center agent said there's no guarantee, I called back 10 mins later since I forgot to ask how soon they'd inform me whether or not the booking was confirmed and the agent said he'd get in touch with CD, 2 minutes later after being put on hold, the agent said CD made an exception and confirmed my booking and emailed me a copy of the confirmation. :)

Should be fine.

I have checked tyres on EK before albeit over two years ago. My tyres were much bigger and I imagine mine would weigh over 32kgs if in a pair. If any package you try to check in weighs over 32kg it will not be accepted. You will need to repack into lighter seperate packs or send as cargo.

SAA has introduced a policy where you can't check car parts and I was actually refused to check in a wing mirror on SA and had to throw it in a bin at OR Tambo. Irritated me hugely as it cost almost £200. In fairness to SAA this was mentioned in small print on the ticket but I think the staff read too much into the rules. I can understand refusing some engine parts but mine was just a mirror in some plastic with a motor.

Errr, that's a bit concerning. A normal home weighing scale showed each tire as 10.3 kg, and an online estimate said that tyres smaller than these (15 inch ones) would weigh between 7 to 9 kg, so I guess 10kg sounds accurate enough for these.
Called EK about 5 minutes ago and they said it shouldn't be an issue, so fingers crossed, will update this thread when my dad is checked in and hopefully, so are the tyres.

Update:

So my dad checked the tyres in. As you can see in the main post, 2 tires are duct taped to each other instead of having all 4 of them separately.
Firstly, they didn't fit in the boot of the Mercedes E200 chauffeur (was the saloon, not the estate) so they had to be in the back seat.

Secondly, at check-in, for some reason the staff didn't allow 2 tires to be taped together so they checked them in as 4 separate pieces.

Might be too bulky taped together. What an interesting thread though... Here I am wondering how to take my Xbox with me in a flight on Sunday...

I've done it with Michelin winter tires before. No problems.

Will you have to pay import duty on these?

Depends on your final destination and customs.

Of course it does. That's why I was asking the OP whether he (or his father) had to pay import duty on tires when coming in to Pakistan from the UAE.

The second check in agent was right to insist on separation. Baggage is usually put in a closed container/ULD called AKE on B777. Lifting two tyres simultaneously into an AKE is unnecessarily hard work. If the AKE already is half full of bags one would have to lift the tyres to shoulder height if AKE is on a dolly and then insert. If the handler is struggling due to the weight, this could cause him to allow the tyres to drop hard on top of other luggage.

Haha, I've taken my PS3/PS4 plenty of times, both hand luggage and checked-in bags, never had trouble taking it along.

Yes, my dad did pay customs on arrival, got them in DXB since the deal here was pretty good, and getting tyres with newer manufacturing dates is hard in Pakistan, so I guess taking them along was definitely worth it. Also, even with the added import duty, they still ended up being slightly cheaper than getting a new set off a dealer here.

You took them on EK?