Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Charges for flying with a tuba??


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Posted by tubadad on September 17, 2003 at 10:19:14:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Charges for flying with a tuba?? posted by tubadad on September 17, 2003 at 07:37:23:

There are some very real problems with shipping tubas...say you are flying to an audition...to whom do you have it shipped?...it is one thing for a student at college to ship his tubas "home" for breaks, where there is a responsible and caring party on the receiving end...shipping tubas will work for some in some situations, but not very well at all in other real life situations like auditions or for the travelling professional.

I do agree that it behooves ITEA or some other body to lobby the airlines (or maybe Congress) for clarification on this issue. But ITEA is small to begin with, and the percentage of its members who have to travel with their tubas is probably very small, so our collective voice may not be very strong when it comes to this matter. I recall that a musician's union regularly speaks out on this matter for all musicians, but off hand I don't know anything specific about it - perhaps ITEA should join forces with them - and I am sure there are others who post here who can fill in the blanks on this matter.

You do raise an excellent point about airport and airline equipment issues. When my son flies to/from home in VA to college in Arizona, we fly him nonstop on either United or America West operating out of Dulles, rather than the more convenient local airport Commair/Delta option; our original reasoning was that there is 50 percent less baggage handling when flying nonstop when compared with flying via connecting flights, hence less likelihood of damage to the tuba, and thus far we have been very pleased with this arrangement in this respect.

But I also recall that in connection with one of the commuter crashes in the last year or so (Charlotte?) that one of the theories under study is that the plane was overloaded or at least unbalanced in the cargo hold, and what I conclude from that situation is that it would be very reasonable for the airlines to refuse oversize and overweight items on the smaller planes. Who knows, for public safety reasons the government or FAA could get involved in this and prohibit or set limits on baggage weights that would leave tubas grounded anyway. I have not heard of anyone being refused passage with a tuba on the smaller planes, but my guess is that this will be the first place that such refusals will be enforced, and for now my only protection against that possibility is that we don't fly on the smaller planes in the first place.

For now, anecdotes are the most useful thing any of us have. And that is why I peruse this forum and ask questions, seeking information from others who have the same concerns.


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