Flying with Your Guitar on United Airlines

I've now made eight roundtrips between San Francisco and London since the posting of the infamous YouTube video of how bad UAL was to a particular customer and his guitar.

Well, I can attest that I don't know how much NICER they could be since they reconsidered their posture after the video!

Case in point:

Yesterday I flew home from London Heathrow Airport on UAL to San Francisco. I always gate check my instrument (in this case my 2014 Collings D2HA in a Hiscox Pro II case) and when I walked up to the gate the Station Agent said, "Why don't I see if I can get that in the cabin for you? Where are you sitting?"

Can you believe THAT!!??

He disappeared and returned to tell me it was now sitting in a cabinet just two seats from where I was sitting! But wait, the story gets even better...

Just prior to landing a Flight Attendant told me she was taking the guitar up front and it would be WAITING FOR ME AT THE DOOR! UNBELIEVABLE and especially wonderful since every seat on the plane was filled and moving that case amongst the surge would have been doable but not much fun.

I am certainly not a rockstar, I don't work for UAL, and I was flying Economy Class. But I was treated like a king!

I can't speak for other routes on UAL, but I always take a nice dread with me to play at London's Ruskin House Folk & Blues Club and UAL has been GREAT!

If you're making the trip, you should certainly consider flying United Airlines.

I wonder if you ran into a couple of people who actually play?

If you don't play it's just another price of baggage

6, lucky break there from the flight attendants.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if there actually was backlash from the "United breaks guitars" youtube thing. It's nice that they're taking it seriously.

On a completely different note, I fly United between Logan and San Francisco every quarter or so and I've traveled with a shotgun. You can't gate-check a firearm, so it all has to be done at the ticket counter. All I can say is that while they're very polite, the process is very slow, and delivery at the other end is spotty... they're *supposed* to put the case in the oversize luggage rack, but a couple of times it's come out the carousel. Also, Logan is an easy check-in and doesn't require a trip to TSA, but San Fran takes a long time and they run you completely across the terminal to get to TSA for the firearm check-in/declaration.

Anyway, this is neither here nor there with respect to handling fragile musical instruments. I'm very glad to hear you're having no trouble with the gate check.

chazmo said:

......On a completely different note, I fly United between Logan and San Francisco every quarter or so and I've traveled with a shotgun. You can't gate-check a firearm, so it all has to be done at the ticket counter. All I can say is that while they're very polite......l.....l............

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Yeah, isn't it amazing how polite people are when you're carrying a shotgun? ;-}

So true, Bernie!! I always chalked it up to my charm and good looks.

PTC Bernie said:

Yeah, isn't it amazing how polite people are when you're carrying a shotgun? ;-}

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That's nothin'.
You should see how they treat folks with accordions.

Accordioningly, one imagines.

chazmo said:

Accordioningly, one imagines.

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Masterful, simply masterful.
I can't even say that and I talk for a living.
:biggrin-new:

It's very hard to say, but I'm working on it....... :encouragement: