Why is it acceptable to take a guitar as your personal item on flights.

This leads on a little from the kids on planes post. i have no problem with anyone on a plane who has paid for the seat they are sat in.

But when you use 3 people luggage space in the overhead with your guitar and I am paying extra to check my snowboard in the hold I do get a little upset.

Was considering smuggling winter sports equipment in an upright piano?

If they weighed me and my luggage and charged by the lb for the flight I would be stoked as it would be what the world is not.

You weren’t sharing a flight with Cat Stevens were you?

I thought this was about busking…

It’s so that if things all go wrong, there’s someone to play tunes & cheer everyone up before the crash

You won’t be able to hear them over the crying children, surely?

It’s so that if things all go wrong, there’s someone to play tunes & cheer everyone up before the crash

Screaming kids I can handle, but stuck in a metal tube at 30,000 feet with someone playing folk on an acoustic guitar…

‘Have you seen the old man…….’

erm, I *always* have to check my guitar into the bloody hold, I carry it in a hiscox flight case but I carry it to the plane and collect it from the baggage handlers at the other end, they won’t let me buy a seat for it, unlike those bloody cellists who ARE allowed to buy seats for their instruments.

If however I was prepared to carry my guitar wrapped in a stupid soft “case” then I would be allowed to bring it on board but in my experience those bloody bags only serve to make morons think that it is subsequently bulletproof and cram their ten thousand handbags in and around it leaving me with various dents and knocks to discover at the other end.

Why are you not allowed to carry a snowboard on as hand luggage? because it is not a fragile wooden box with high tension strings pulled across it, its a laminated board designed to be jumped up and down on!

(and you can buy hard cases for them too!)

There were not one but two men with guitars on my last flight.

Neither of them had a beard or sandals though.

The air line site just says your personal item can be a musical instrument but no other guidance i can see yet.

Drum Kit would be good.

“Drum Kit would be good.”

You could do a cool back beat to the wailing kids, Yoko Ono style.

Easyjet got a bit uppity about me checking my Grand Piano last time i flew. It wasn’t so much the size or the weight. It was the fact that it had Elton John still attached to it. Apparently he still has outstanding arrest warrants in Romania. How was I supposed to know?

the other reason that I’d not take my guitar in cabin is if I started singing the pilot would probably set the plane down as quickly as possible, into the side of the nearest available immovable object.

MrNutt

Seems like you have the ideal solution.

You can carry it to the plane keeping bag throwers out of the loop no one on board has the problem of trying to fit there bags around it.
Surely this is the best way.

My snowboard while laminated is not unbreakable. However I have no problem checking it in. I do have a problem paying extra though when providing you use a soft case you can take a small folk group with there instruments in the cabin for free leaving me with my small hand luggage forced into my leg room as the overhead lockers seem full of massive hand bags an guitars.

binners – I tried sneaking my skis on a KLM flight and would have made it too, but they objected to the life size replica of Gandhi strapped to my knees and the ironing board on my back.

To add insult to injury they went on to confiscate my skis.

just get one of THESE Jack, then you can have all the joy of lugging it around duty free / departures and then walk out to the plane in the pissing rain to hand your irreplaceable piece of you to some psychopathic bag chucker only to sit in the plane wondering, I wonder if they took it off?

hang on, have a read of the text on that site I just linked to:

You can also use the Sportube case to transport other pieces of equipment from fishing rods, music keyboards, replica weapons and anything else that is long and needs rigid protection.

REPLICA WEAPONS?!?! essential for collectors of faux “Vampir”: Reloadable RPG launcher, PG-29V with ~750 mm RHA penetration after ERA’s who just can’t vacation without it!

You can put real guns in hold luggage if you are off shooting at some far flung location.

I am sure there must be a better way. Maybe like the pushchair bringers who just leave them at the front of the cabin.
I think you have to bring a child to do this though?

All this though is easy in comparison to flying with your bike. Again not delicate but they still managed to bend the brake disks and put the wheel axle through the wheel bags.

I just think flying seems so unfair. I try to conform to the rules in a reasonable way only to be crammed into a corner by someone or a combination of people who have stretched the rules to the max.

GlitterGary – perhaps they got wind of your plan to parachute from the aircraft onto an iceberg when you got over the North Atlantic

You can put real guns in hold luggage if you are off shooting at some far flung location.

i once checked in behind an elephant hunter!! he had a trolley full of guns, his assistant was pushing the trolley of clothes. that was cool to watch (he seemed a bit bonkers) but was a long wait – he had about 6 guns!