How to Fly With Fountain Pens (Without Leaks): The Complete Guide
One of the most popular questions I see about traveling with fountain pens is from people who are wondering how to store their fountain pens safely during air travel. It's true: temperature and pressure changes during flight can cause air bubbles in your pens to expand, causing them to burp out ink and make a bit of a mess.
Thankfully, there are a few easy things you can do to prevent
- ink leaking into your pen caps or personal belongings,
- damage to your pens, and
- embarrassment.
Here's how to fly with inked fountain pens:
1. Store your fountain pens in your carry-on
Luggage placed into a plane's cargo hold can undergo tremendous temperature changes during the flight. To prevent your ink from spilling into your clothes and other sensitive stuff, or even freezing, bring your fountain pens with you into the cabin.
2. Bag your pens!
A ziplock bag can give you so much security for only a few cents of cost. Should all of the following precautions fail, a sealed plastic bag will still prevent ink from staining your treasured carry-on belongings. It's worth it.
3. Roll each pen in a paper towel
Yes, the paper towel will absorb ink in case of a leak that escapes the fountain pen's cap seal. But more importantly, the paper towel prevents pens from bumping and scratching each other in their ziplock bag during the flight.
If you have a good fountain pen case, you've got my grudging permission to skip this step.
4. Store inked pens nib-up
If a pen's nib is facing up, it's likely that any air (inside your cartridge, converter, ink sac, or the pen's body) will be able to escape without carrying lots of ink with it, should the air expand due to temperature or pressure changes.
5. Fill 'em up!
The less air is in a pen, and the more full of ink it is, the lower your chances of a large, expanding air bubble carrying ink out of the pen and into the cap, the paper towel, the pen case, and the ziplock bag.
Practical Tips
Cartridge Pens
If you've just got a regular ink cartridge in a pen, and you don't need to write on your flight, consider taking the cartridge out and putting in a new, sealed one at your destination. If you've got a 5ml ink vial and an ink syringe, you can just suck the remaining ink out of a cartridge, store it in the vial, and then refill the cartridge later.
Fountain Pens with Sealed Feeds
Many (japanese-style) eyedroppers and piston or vacuum fillers have a way to seal the fountain pen's feed from the ink reservoir. This means that in pens like the Opus eyedroppers or the Pilot 823, you can just tip the nib up, open the seal to drain the feed, and then close the seal (usually a captured screw-cap on the back of the pen).
Minimize inked pens
How many pens do you really need inked during flight? Just one is probably fine. Each pen you empty and store un-inked before the flight removes another "inky mess" lottery ticket from your life. Just ink what you'll need!
Don't overthink it
Even if you don't follow all of this advice, each tip increases the chances that you'll have worry-free (and ink-spill-free) flights with your fountain pens. Worst case, your pens leak a few drops of ink into their caps. Be careful when opening them and get on with your life.
Have fun on your travels!