Back in 2023, Mike Matteson wrote a great article for Goldspot on flying with fountain pens and if you haven’t read it yet, you should go check it out now because today we are going to use that as our jumping off point and talk about the specific pens I love for travel.
Best Fountain Pens for Travel You'll Love on the Go
In my opinion, there are very few pens that are actually bad for travel but there are definitely some pens that travel better than others. As a rule of thumb, my favourite fountain pens to fly with are ones that allow me to remove air from the ink reservoir or get a full, airless, fill before I leave the house.
There are four main types of fountain pen filling systems that most pens use:
...and even though we will cover some specific pens, we are also going to cover each filling system so you know which pens in your collection are best for travel.
So let’s get into it and start talking about one of my favourite topics, pen filling systems.
The Systems
In all honesty there is only one pen style that I would really recommend you not travel with inked… an eyedropper! Japanese eyedropper pens like the OPUS 88 family are apparently fine to fly with as they have an ink shutoff valve. Normal eyedropper pens have no ink shutoff and have no way to remove air from the barrel. This means that the nib can end up acting like a water bottle with a straw on a plane where the ink can end up just shooting up the nib when you open the pen and make a mess.
For me, piston pens fall in this grey zone when it comes to flying with them. Sometimes I have no issues and sometimes they leak on car rides with large altitude changes. I find it nearly impossible to get a full fill on them making it quite difficult to fly without them leaking to some extent. I have gone so far as to twist out a nib in a piston pen to syringe fill it in order to get a full, air-bubbleless fill. But, oftentimes this is more drama than I want to go through when filing a pen for a trip; especially as it is difficult to fill a pen this way on the return trip home.
I tend to fly with cartridge converter pens and I have come to realize this past year that sometimes the simplest filling system is the best. I love that by throwing a few extra cartridges in my pencil case I can re-ink my pen on the go during my trip if my initial converter or cartridge runs dry. When I fly with pens, I always make sure to remove all possible air bubbles from the converter the day before my flight. If I have the pen inked with a cartridge, nine times out of ten, I will actually remove the cartridge before my flight and just pop a new one in once I get to my destination. For travel, I love pens that take standard international cartridges because they are fairly easy to find even in foreign countries and I have even found them in airport gift shops.
Most vacuum pens tend to have a shut off valve which makes them perfect to fly with. This double reservoir system allows you to have a small amount of ink stored up near the nib while most of the ink is stored in a separate chamber sealed off with a valve.
Although a vac pen like the Pilot Custom 823 doesn't have a double reservoir, enough ink is in the feed that you could easily write for a few pages without having to open the safety valve for more ink.
Travel-Ready Pens
Nahvalur Original Plus
One of the least expensive vacuum pens on the market, the Nahvalur Orignial Plus comes in a huge variety of colors standard and a few special editions annually. The pen has a shutoff valve meaning it is one of the best pens to fly with as most of the ink supply cannot get to the nib.
Nahvalur is one of the few pens I will actually clean the nib before inking the first time as I find they tend to write better after a simple flush with even just water.
Esterbrook Estie
Esterbrook pens all fit standard international filing systems but by far the Estie is my favourite because of the colour options and how it fits in my hand. The big reason Esterbrook has ended up on this list over other standard international cartridges pen options is their nib choices. Lots of brands offer various nib choices but most of them are proprietary filling systems which I dislike for travel because depending on where you are in the world, if you run out of cartridges you may be stuck. With 19 steel or gold nib sizes available Esterbrook offers you a great deal of choice to customize your pen for travel while still allowing you to use any standard international refill in your pen.
Faber-Castell Neo Slim
Depending on where you are traveling, you may not want to carry a flashy pen with you. The Neo-Slim does not look like a fountain pen. With its clean, simple lines, it closely resembles a ballpoint pen but once uncapped it is a lovely fountain pen nib. For under $60 it has an exceptionally good steel nib in extra fine, fine, medium or broad and it takes both standard international long and short cartridges as well as any standard international converters.
Bonus Advice
1. Travel with Q-Tips! Even with these pens and Mike’s advice for traveling with pens, you may have some ink leak onto the nib or end up with a few drops in the cap. Q-tips are great for cleaning up any ink from the nooks and crannies of your pen.
2. Always store pens nib up when flying or on a long car ride when they are inked to help minimize ink leakage out of the pens.
3. Remove as much air from the reservoir as possible no matter which pen you travel with. You need to minimize the effects of pressure changes inside the vessel.
4. Pack extra ink. You never know what might happen during travel. It is always best to pack some extra ink in a sample vial or travel inkwell just in case. You can also always throw some cartridges into your bag.