no violins allowed

jj has been playing the violin since she was 5. that’s been 10 years now. she has been following the suzuki method. in the summers there are suzuki method “institutes” or camps. we have been going to a wonderful one in new hampshire for several years with jj’s cousins, the daughters of my sister, who also play the violin. many students from the music school in cambridge that jj used to attend, go there too. we all go back year after year. last year we did not go, since we had just moved to paris. this year jj said that she wanted to go. it seemed like a good opportunity to go back and see the family.

i found a flight transferring through london. we packed carefully so that we could each bring a violin as carry-on baggage. one was a smaller violin that i wanted to bring back to sell. i knew that the violin’s dimensions were longer than the allowed dimensions, but we always have brought them in the cabin in the past. however, this time, in paris, the check-in lady would not allow us to bring it on. she said the rule was clear, that only things that fit into the specified dimensions were allowed and that they would have to be checked into the hold. i told her that these were delicate instruments and that we always carried them into the cabin. not only was i worried about them being thrown around with the luggage but temperature change would be harmful to them. she said she could put a “fragile” sticker on them. when i continued to protest, she called her manager who said that we could buy tickets for each instrument (we had paid $800 for each of our round trip tickets). she was firm. jj was in agreement with me, we could not send the violins below. i had brought a very large suitcase planning on bringing things back from the US so it was mostly empty. we repacked everything to put jj’s suitcase inside my case. we took the 2 violins out of their cases, left the bows in them, but stuffed the empty space with underwear. then we wrapped the violins in a sarong that i like to travel with because it comes in handy for so many things, like for example, wrapping 2 violins. i put them into a canvas bag to carry them onto the plane. we sent the 2 cases on, and to add insult to injury, we were charged 45 euros for an extra bag. it was scary to not have a protective case around them, but seemed like a better solution than letting them go down below. i held my arms around them to protect them as jj walked in front like a body guard running interference as we passed through the crowds of travelers. i was quite fuming. i knew she was wrong, but i had no choice. we even saw another passenger with a violin case getting onto the plane. when we got to the plane, i asked the steward about it. he said, “oh goodness no, i play the violin too and i would never send my violin into the hold. it would be too dangerous for them. violins are certainly allowed on board. we regularly carry whole orchestras. cellos do have to buy seats though” i told him we had the violins with us, outside of their cases. he was shocked. he told the head stewardess who was also aghast. she said that the ground crew were from a different airlines that had recently joined with them and there had been lots of complaints. i asked if it would be possible to get the cases back out so we could have them. she promised to go and ask the ground crew to see if it was possible. i wasn’t surprised when they said “no”, since we were about to take off. in london i asked the manager about this and he said that it was at the discretion of the flight crew, but at least the checkin lady should have let us bring them to the gate to see if there was space. i had hoped to get the violin cases out at london but it was impossible. all the luggage is put into containers for cross atlantic flights (imagine the violins at the bottom of a container!).

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