After spending a lot of time in a workshop recently I can tell you that whenever you get mix more than two musicians with a luthier in a room together then the subject of airline guitar damage comes up. Everybody seems to have their own favorite story about when an airline has killed a guitar. I think the worst I heard was the gentleman who had his guitar crushed in a cargo bay door-the worst part being he heard them grinding the door shut over and over, all the while never realizing it was his beloved ax being axed below his feet.
Airlines are clearly evil. Only a truly evil entity would prevent poor, honest, hard-working musicians from bringing their instruments into the cabin with them. Of course, poor, honest, hard-working hunters don’t really expect to be permitted to carry their guns in the cabin and nobody gets worked up about that. Poor, honest, hard-working antique collectors don’t expect to be able to bring their over-sized Ming vases with them, and poor, honest, hard-working painting restorers rarely show surprise at not being permitted to bring their Renaissance masterpieces in with them either. It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen a live chicken sitting on a poor, honest, hard-working farmer’s lap in economy class too. But none of that is relevant because, well, musicians deserve to bring their instruments onboard with them, right?
It seems like every few weeks there’s a story about someone being “forced” to stow their instrument as cargo on a plane or hold it on their lap/put it under the seat in front without the case in order to make it fit. Usually these stories turn out to involve some incredibly valuable, one-of-a-kind, can’t-be-replaced original made about a thousand years ago by Master Amaguarnerstradius of Who-even-knows-where-that-is-town in Europe. Frankly folks, it’s time to call bullshit on this.
The airlines do not ever “force” people to stow their instrument or hold them under their feet at great risk or anything else. All the airlines ever do (and remarkably rarely in my experience) is say “you can’t bring that into the passenger cabin”. It’s actually the instrument’s owner who decides to stow it or hold it or whatever the case may be, thus risking in-flight damage themselves. Now before everybody jumps up and down, I know that you have to catch that flight to make it to that gig, or that festival or that recording studio or wherever it is that you are going. But that isn’t really the point. You have chosen to go to the new location, nobody is forcing you to go there and so it is you who chooses to make the decision to risk damage to your instrument. Yourself. All the much maligned airline does is say “if you’d like to fly with us you have to follow our rules”. Which seems very reasonable to me.
Now clearly, some people have good experiences with airlines and some have bad ones. And part of what upsets people (i.e. turns them into screeching harpies) seems to be the unfairness of the seemingly arbitrary decisions by cabin crew and airline staff about which instruments get to fly up front and which ones get relegated to the cold dark reaches of the cargo bay. But if you’ve ever spent much time sitting in an airport watching people board planes it’s pretty easy to see who gets on and who doesn’t. There are really two types of musicians who fly. The first group have an instrument in a case, which fits in the overhead luggage compartment, and are clearly fond of it, and take care to board early and they get on the plane and fly off and never have an issue.
The second group have a different approach. They have their instrument in an expensive oversized fiberglass case, which is usually violently colored: orange, green, or perhaps with a nice fluorescent paisley pattern on it. Ironically these are cases designed to protect the instrument inside from damage, but despite spending large amounts of money on a case to do so these folks don’t want to risk it. They also have an attitude which screams “I deserve to bring this on the plane because…..I am a Musician…..and don’t you dare tell me otherwise.” If you still don’t think you could recognize these people here’s one more hint. These are people who have a zero understanding of spatial awareness. The case is usually carried backpack-style, and apparently this means anyone behind The Musician is completely unimportant and fair game to be smacked in the head with a large fiberglass case. But gosh, aren’t those airlines evil for not letting The Musician onboard with The Instrument in The Case. Yeah, no.
Shall I tell you what most of the workshop times is spent doing? You might be surprised to hear it’s not reconstructing matchwood destroyed by those evil airlines. Nope, it’s fixing cracks created by keeping instruments in fluctuating humidity. It’s replacing pegs and tuners worn out by having been constantly ground into the peg holes to force tuning. It’s removing superglue that was applied by an overzealous owner who tried to fix something themselves, instead of actually, shock horror, paying a luthier to do so. It’s re-gluing headstocks knocked off when instruments were dropped, or cases closed onto them. It’s straightening necks that have warped over a lifetime of poor storage and little love. And it’s refinishing instruments where sweat (or maybe beer) not cleaned off after use has eaten through the varnish.
It’s time to take responsibility for ourselves. It’s not the airlines who damage instruments, it’s us.
Which seems very strange. Surely if we really ARE musicians, and we really DO love music, and we really DO care for our instruments, then shouldn’t WE be doing everything we can to care for them properly? I know that nobody was making a quick weekend dash up to Cremona by budget airline when Master Amaguarnerstradius was making his instruments, but I don’t think that’s why those instruments have lasted so long. They lasted because people realized their worth (which, my friends, is not remotely related to their monetary value) and took care of them. They learned how to look after them , and then they did so. They loved and cherished them and made sure those beautiful instruments could be handed down from generation to generation so that now we can love and cherish them too. Your instrument may not be as valuable as those ancient masterpieces, though it might be one day if it survives long enough.
And anyway, if it brings you joy and happiness through music then surely it is as worthy as they are. In which case, shouldn’t you be taking care of it? Properly? But then, it’s so much easier to blame those evil airlines than actually work at looking after our instruments isn’t it………
