In reply to Neil Williams:
Why not sporting equipment?
Originally climbing equipment went as sporting equipment on EJ - you just had to tick a box and fill in what it was for. Once I got stopped when they asked what it was, I said climbing equipment, they asked was climbing a sport (as much to themselves as me), we agreed climbing was a sport and all was well.
A few years ago they changed the web interface and restricted the number of sports that were "sports" by a drop down choice box on the web interface, I think a few half hearted attempts were made by people to argue the toss with EJ. I even recall someone posting a "let's get EJ to include climbing gear as a sport" thread on UKC (thread hijacked by people going on about carbon impact of air travel vs car travel) but it went nowhere.
Declaring your climbing gear as "ski (mountaineering) but I'm hiring the skis" apparently works for winter stuff but not for me as I was going sport climbing when this change occurred.
So according to EJ climbing is NOT a sport but gear heavy activities such as scuba diving and golf are. Anyone want to argue the toss with EJ again* I'd be for another go.
On the plus side if you pay for a bag and fill it to the limit with gear it'll be fine. Get scales, wear a pile of heavy clothes / boots on the plane and you'll fit camping and alpine gear in one bag.
* To shortcut the carbon emission argument - the carbon emissions people short haul flights are roughly equivalent or better than car, bus or rail travel per passenger mile, it is just that you cover more miles in planes because they are faster.