Dear Philip, There is a very good page of advice about travelling by air with lute written by Lynda Sayce on her website at: http://www.theorbo.com/Writings/Flying.htm
She has a lot of experience and her advice is detailed, practical and sensible. Good luck with your trip. David At 19:50 -0700 22/1/12, Philip Soren wrote: > I am about to move to China for 18 months for business. This is > entirely too much time to be without my Renaissance lute. > After calling both airlines and both airports that I will use to leave > the country, the procedure for taking a "guitar" seems to be: they > might let you take it as a carry on item; if they don't, they will gate > check it. (A gate check is where you go through TSA and normal > security with the instrument in hand, then, at the time of boarding at > the gate, hand it off to an attendant who then puts it somewhere in the > belly of the plane with strollers and wheelchairs and such, then hands > it back to you after disembarking.) > I have never done this before. I'm quite scared, having read horror > stories all over the internet about damaged guitars. However, 90% of > those stories have to do with the instrument going through normal > checked baggage, e.g., the carousel and the baggage handler monkeys. > If I can gate check my instrument (after having tuned the strings down, > plastic-bagged it inside the case, and tossed an oasis humidifier in), > everything should be okay, right? In theory? > I suppose my other option is to bundle it up and ship it to China. But > not only is that in the $250+ price range, that will get handled by a > LOT of different people. That scares me even more. > What do you all think? Some people here I'm sure has had some > experience with lute air travel. > P.S. Buying another cross-Pacific ticket for my lute to sit next to me > is completely out of the question, unfortunately. > -- > > >To get on or off this list see list information at >http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- The Smokehouse, 6 Whitwell Road, Norwich, NR1 4HB England. Telephone: + 44 (0)1603 629899 Website: http://www.vanedwards.co.uk
