Carry Your Instrument On The Plane – It's The Law
aristake.com
aristake.com
This feels like a breach of information ethics. You're presenting information to another party without a key detail that could potentially undermine your case, simply because you feel you have the moral high ground and the detail shouldn't be there in the first place.
The author believes "it is the law and they should comply with it," except for a certain element of the fine print which the author thinks is too lenient. It makes me a bit uncomfortable whenever someone openly justifies using omission as a tactic.
Oh, please...
You raise a good point.
I think what you're seeing in the replies is that people will use the law however they see fit to get whatever advantage they want, while allying their own morals/ethics to the case.
In this case, we're talking about ever so slightly manipulating an airline, which is likely worth billions. Most people seem OK with that. (I am too, FWIW)
If we were talking about taking advantage of an individual, I think most people would agree that's not so cool.
That doesn't affect the ethics of something. Remember, you are also screwing the other passengers on the plane that can no longer fit their bag in overhead (on full flights). Their bag is now at risk because it will need to be gate-checked.
That isn't my problem, that is the airline and security's problem. After seeing "rules" applied unequally to passengers (I had to check an identical computer bag to someone else forcing me to purchase another computer bag in the duty free shops or to actually check my laptop) I no longer care about other passengers. When the airlines and airport security apply the rules equally, then I'll care about morals and ethics on airplanes.
Right now, if I have to check my bag because some dude carried on his guitar, I failed myself to get on early enough and I'll let the airlines know I don't like it. But I won't blame the guy who carried on his guitar.
According to you and what you think is right and wrong.
As you can see from the comments, not everyone agrees with you.
I guess the logic here is that airlines have a lot of money, and they also have some sort of power dynamic with customers that borders on oppressive, so one would be justified in loosening their moral standards when dealing with such an entity. Not sure how I feel about that, but I guess that's one way of interacting with the world.
OTOH if you like interesting synths I have a wonderful 1976 ARP Pro DGX, and I love it but it's far less versatile than the PF :)
1. What lobbyists would have written this and most importantly, why? When I think of lobbyists I think of someone having something financial to gain. I'm not aware of a huge flying-musician lobby.
2. What tab? What penalty are we the unfortunate paying because of this?
2. Agreed, what tab? If the airlines can charge a fee comparable to equivalent carry on luggage, what difference does this actually make? I guess it must be against an extra surcharge for instruments, which honestly I wouldn't have thought would exist in the first place.
2: Cabin space is a scarce resource. When some of it is forcefully allocated to a privileged group, there is less for the rest of us.
2. These items take up more than the usually allowed amount of cabin baggage space. With high flight loads these days and a high proportion of people carrying on their bags instead of checking, passengers often have to gate-check baggage. It's inconvenient at best, and at worst it results in people losing their possessions.
This measure also decreases the revenue of airlines which they will either make up by increasing prices for everyone, reducing expenditure elsewhere, or lowering profits. The latter two don't affect me that much but you might feel differently if you were an employee or shareholder of the business.
Many musicians are travelling as part of their job, which is not usually high-paid. I don't mind giving up a bit of locker space so their livelihood is preserved. Lord knows it's hard enough for artists these days as it is.
Maybe those incident are not very frequents. But when you multiply that by entire orchestra travelling overseas…
If one is looking for the root cause of this cost, the arrow points directly at the incompetence of the airlines.
Mainly though I think the OP is just lashing out because it's sounds unfair that one person can stow an up to 165 lb, overly large piece of luggage simply because it's a musical instrument.
Depends on the components.
>Second, a properly backed up desktop computer is easy to replace if it gets damaged,
Doesn't change the lost time having to restore. There is a reason someone travels with electronic equipment in the first place. Second, it's not if the computer has specialized hardware (again, there is a reason someone would travel with a desktop). Third, a desktop could easily be loaded with $3000 in components. Not exactly simple to replace either.
The only thing it enforces is that they can't be gouged to pay extra merely for bringing a musical instrument aboard.
I play indian tablas, the darbuka, djembe, and bongos. I consistently take longer in the security line and absolutely hate gate checking my instruments. I usually leave to the airport 2 hours beore my Caucasian posse of travelers.
Thank you for posting.
Here's what I do, wherever I may roam:
1. Have the instrument in a good gig bag with lots of padding, not a hardshell case.
2. Approach boarding with the gig bag hanging from the shoulder furthest away from the attendant checking your boarding pass. Try to arrange things so that you can board early.
3. This one is important: always, always be pleasant and super polite to staff. You do not want to get aggressive or demanding.
4. If asked to gate-check the guitar, don't sweat it. Let them issue you the tag. While you're walking down the jet bridge, "accidentally" drop the tag on the floor nonchalantly. Once you board the plane, if they hassle you about stowing it in overhead, ask politely if you can stow the guitar in the crew closet or in the back of the plane.
5. As a safeguard, take an all-purpose screwdriver and pack it in the gig bag. If you have a sturdy electric (like, say, a Fender Telecaster), you can easily unscrew the neck to allow you to store it in a smaller space. Obviously, I don't like doing this but it may be necessary in a jam.
After having security confiscate my small hex wrench set (part of my bike kit) and, on a different occasion, a tiny screwdriver (part of my camera's filter kit), I would recommend getting a CHEAP screwdriver.
I flew numerous time with a guitar without any problem. Only once they bothered me. I had a laptop and an electric guitar in a gig bag. They didn't allow me to take both items with me. I had to put the laptop and the guitar in the same bag.
I agree with the author that getting on the plane early is important. Another good trick is to try and get seats near the rear of the plane, as many (but not all) airlines try to board the plane from the rear seats first. This gives you a better shot at getting space in one of the overhead compartments.
Unfortunately, a guitar in a gig bag is probably not going to survive long on commercial flights, the way people jam stuff into every last mm-cubed of the overhead bins. So flight case, or at the very least a softshell case like a Roadrunner (basically, zippered nylon fabric over lots of stryofoam)
I mean, I really don't understand this. Do you like hearing music? Do you like people playing instruments? If that is the case, then you need to expect that the situation in which a person NEEDS to take his or her instrument as a CARRY ON on an airplane occurs VERY OFTEN.
Seriously, there's a guy in this thread complaining about not being able to carry on his desktop computer, as if that were comparable to a guitar. There's another guy complaining about 'information ethics'.
The idea that a person will get any amount of hassle at all for taking an instrument on a plane directly causes less music to be made.
Music is much more important than the minor whiny bullshit people are bitching about in this thread.
Lets hope they don't change it (before it takes effect !)
My first musical instrument experience was earlier this week when my wife and I checked in our sitar[1] for a flight from Bangkok to Sydney. The carrier, Qantas, wasn't able to tell us if we'd have a problem before arriving but we were pleasantly surprised that the airport checkin staff sorted it for free.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, you typically get one bag checked in as part of your ticket. So there's no economic incentive to try and shove half your possessions into a small overhead compartment.
Then it gets sillier when they gate-check the luggage anyhow. To deal with the problems caused by not checking luggage "for free", they are ... checking a random selection of luggage at the gate. In a less efficient manner. In a way that slows boarding.
The most amazing part is that this situation has now totally inverted the order of boarding. It used to be that boarding last or near-last was a privilege. Who the hell wants to sit in a cramped plane for even longer? Now it's a curse.
Small changes can have surprising consequences.
But as a colleague told me years ago: never travel with anything you aren't prepared to lose, because You Never Know.
When I take a guitar with me on the road, I take one of these: http://www.brunner-guitars.com/?page_id=591 Not the cheapest, but it'll fit in the overhead every time.