New rule lets gear for music ride near

Baseball cap turned backward, Zachary De Pue stands on the tarmac by the boarding steps of a US Airways Express regional jet in Charlotte, N.C., furiously fiddling the prelude to the Partita No. 3 in E major by J.S. Bach on his 250-year-old violin.

"Bach would be very upset," De Pue, 35, who is the concertmaster at the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, declares to a video camera held by a fellow violinist, Nicolas Kendall.

The tarmac video went viral in May after De Pue was not allowed to board the plane with his valuable violin for a flight bound for Fayetteville, where he and the other members of the jazz-bluegrass string trio Time for Three were scheduled to play.

De Pue, who has been concertmaster at the Indianapolis Symphony since 2007, said that a flight attendant told him the violin would have to be gate-checked -- placed in the cargo hold -- because it could not be accommodated in an overhead bin. The two violinists were able to take their instruments on a later flight, arriving in Fayetteville in plenty of time. American Airlines, which merged with US Airways, did not respond to requests for comment.

Well, Bach would probably be a little less upset now, since the Transportation Department has issued a new rule that addresses a problem many musicians have when flying with costly, fragile instruments like violins and guitars. Starting in March airlines will be required to treat such instruments just like any other passenger's carry-on bag.

"Airlines have in their policies that they accept these instruments, but then once the musician gets ready to board the plane, they're sometimes told there is not enough space" and instead are required to gate-check an instrument that could easily be damaged, said Alfonso Pollard, legislative director of the American Federation of Musicians, which led the efforts that prompted the Transportation Department to issue the rule in December. There are about 127,000 employed musicians in the United States, the department said, as well as about 5.8 million school-age musicians.

"We had to get the airlines to understand that the problem is that front-line employees don't always follow the rules," Pollard said.

The new rule states that if a musical instrument otherwise complies with federal and airline policies for carry-on bags, it must receive the same "first-come, first-served" treatment as any other passenger bag. So if you stow your guitar in the bin, flight attendants cannot remove it and require you to check it, "even if the space taken by the musical instrument could accommodate one or more other carry-on bags," the rule says.

A tuba in the cargo hold is one thing, but musicians who travel with smaller, stringed instruments are understandably anxious about entrusting them to a baggage handler. Musicians say they regularly have problems when gate agents or flight attendants insist that an instrument that would fit in an overhead bin be put under the plane instead.

"Nobody's going to be able to take a Stradivarius on a flight if they have to put it in cargo," Pollard said, referring to the valuable violins made by the Stradivari family in Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries. The new rule will most likely reduce the amount of "back-and-forth and arguments between musicians and flight attendants and pilots about whether or not they can bring their instruments on the aircraft," he added.

Some of the initiative for negotiating the rule came from union leaders at the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, said Laura Ross, a violinist there since 1984. One memorable episode involved a Stradivarius violin carried by the concertmistress when the orchestra flew to perform at Carnegie Hall in 2000, she said. "The gate attendant actually tried to take it out of her hand after telling her she was going to have to gate-check it," Ross recalled.

Overhead bin wars are now common, given that airplanes are full and passengers have been bringing more bags on board since most airlines began charging for checked bags six years ago. But bin space was contested even back in 2000. "We were lucky because we had somebody in the orchestra who had worked part time as a flight attendant for another airline, and she was running up and down the aisle making sure everything fit in the bins," Ross said of the group's trip -- although "a viola did end up flying in the cockpit," she said.

Guitars also figure in carry-on disputes. One guitar incident yielded a viral protest song and video, United Breaks Guitars, by Canadian musician Dave Carroll, in 2008. On a flight with band members from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Omaha, Neb., Carroll reluctantly checked his valuable guitar because he said he had experienced previous problems trying to carry it on flights. The guitar arrived badly damaged. United apologized, but Carroll parlayed his videos into a book and a career as a speaker on customer service.

Naturally, a new rule requiring more accommodation of sometimes unwieldy instruments will add one more measure of travail for flight attendants, who often say that the part of their jobs they dislike most is having to referee overhead bin disputes.

"It's such a headache," said Sydney Pearl, a flight attendant for almost 20 years and author of a book of on-the-job woe. She added: "We fly to Nashville, so there are instruments galore. It's always a chore because some guitars take up an entire bin. Sometimes we have to gate-check those instruments, unfortunately."

She said that most baggage handlers treated instruments with care.

De Pue added that, with some exceptions, "most flight attendants and pilots usually make an effort to find overhead space for it when you tell them you have a violin."

Musicians who travel often have learned to plan ahead. "I do a lot of flying on Southwest, so I purchase their Early Bird boarding so I can make sure I get in and I'm sitting right underneath where my violin is," Ross said.

There are other challenges for musicians who travel with larger instruments, like cellos, which require buying an extra seat. Musician organizations in the United States and Europe are trying to negotiate around problems encountered with international endangered species laws that, for example, have caused the authorities to confiscate a violin bow made ages ago with a decorative ivory tip, or a bluegrass mandolin partly constructed of hardwood now deemed endangered.

Travel on 02/01/2015

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