On Jan 23, 2012, at 11:50 AM, 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.)
This happened to me on my last trip back to Japan from America. I
posted it to the LuteNet last April. Here it is again.
Coming back home a month ago with a newly purchased Baroque guitar and
my Ren lute, I was really pushing it in terms of carry-on. The guy at
the boarding gate announced they would be measuring all the carry on
baggage. No escape. I opened the guitar case and implored them. That
guy personally carried the guitar into the cabin and stood it upright
in a little storage area. However the steward switched it with the
lute
and then tried to put the guitar in the overhead where it would not
fit. So it went into the hold. I was very nervous about it because it
was just in a plywood box and I hadn't had a chance to loosen the
strings or anything. In fact my name wasn't even on it. I asked them
to
hand carry it. In Tokyo, I was waiting by the end of the carousel
hoping to catch the guitar as it was spewed out when a worker came up
CARRYING the guitar. Opened it up and all was well. Very relieved.
This
was Air Canada.
Ed Durbrow
Saitama, Japan
[1]http://www.youtube.com/user/edurbrow?feature=watch
[2]http://www.musicianspage.com/musicians/9688/
[3]http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/
--
References
1. http://www.youtube.com/user/edurbrow?feature=watch
2. http://www.musicianspage.com/musicians/9688/
3. http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/
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