The Case for the Airline Case

What does the Federal Aviation Administration have to do with the MI business? More than you might think. Most times when I’m getting on a plane going to or coming from Nashville – which is very often – there’s at least one, and usually a few people bringing guitars into the cabin. Those musicians recently got some welcome news, in the form of some clearer guidelines from the FAA regarding carrying musical instruments on airplanes.

This isn’t the first such set of guidelines for a process that has been historically traumatic for traveling musicians, but it is the most consistent batch that’s arrived so far, and it’s backed by actual legislation, in the form of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, which as the date in its title suggests has been around a while (it’s one thing to pass a law, it’s another to implement, which is what has now finally taken place). The fact is, traveling with musical instruments is complicated, both by the nature of the instruments themselves and by the realities of contemporary air travel. The former speaks for itself: guitars, the most popular instrument by far, are also some of the hardest to accommodate on a plane – they’re inherently fragile, and their cases often contribute as much to making them harder to get into an overhead compartment as they do protecting them from damage. The latter has a lot in common with backstage access these days: the higher up in an airline’s hierarchy you are, the better your chance of getting onto the aircraft earlier than everyone else, which increases your chances of getting your axe into the overhead. The newly updated rules, which went into effect on March 6 of this year, essentially guarantee that musical instruments are entitled to that airborne real estate – the Act allocates overhead bin space on a first come, first served basis; traveling musicians just have to find ways to get to the front of the line before they board. Section 403 of the Act states that carriers are required to allow passengers to stow their musical instruments in an approved stowage area in the cabin but – and the emphasis is mine – “only if at the time the passenger boards the aircraft such stowage space is available.”

Where MI retail comes into the picture here is that the store can be a wealth of information about how best to manage the daunting process of traveling with musical instruments. First, congratulate everyone who took up flute in band in high school, and maybe violin next. Those and other relatively compact instruments generally have no problems either getting space on board or getting their instruments through security. And few keyboards or brass instruments, other than an alto sax, are going to fit, so they’ll be riding underneath in cargo, in their proper cases. Guitars remain the most vulnerable link in the transportation chain.

Fortunately, you can point customers to a sizable array of information options they can access around this. For starters, use the link (via Cornell Law School: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/41724) to the newly established guidelines for traveling with instruments. They’ll get the conversation started. There are a number if websites that have grown up around the topic of how to keep instruments safe during travel, such as flyingwithguitars.com and www.bobbrozman.com/tip_packfly.html. One of the most interesting ones, though, is a blog by an actual Transportation Security Administration officer, who also happens to be a musician. Hosted by the TSA’s on website, the prosaically titled blog – http://blog.tsa.gov/2009/09/traveling-in-key-of-security-musical.html – by “Blogger Bob” doesn’t offer a lot of new insight, but it at least humanizes what has become an unpleasantly intimate aspect of travel.

However, Blogger Bob’s effort also comes with a comments section, and there are some worthy points in it made by readers, including recommendations on how to pack a trombone to survive a six-foot drop out of the luggage hatch onto the tarmac. On any of these websites and blog, skim the comments sections for real-life examples of how other flying musicians are coping.

Some other recommendations I can offer from personal experience – I’m a guitar player with four million miles logged on American Airlines – is suggesting to customers that they sign up for the frequent flier programs of the airlines they fly regularly. Even if they don’t fly enough to attain any of the elite status levels (the most basic tier on all of them is usually reached at 25,000 miles), anything that separates them from the rest of the pack angling to stake out storage space onboard will help. Several websites remind us that airlines are happy to sell musicians a second seat for their instruments, but for far less money you can buy enhanced access to the flight – a seat with slightly more legroom – that also comes with early boarding.

The MI retailer needs less to be a jack of all trades than a Swiss Army knife of a single trade, and how to get a guitar or a tuba from point A to point B by air is another way to provide the kind of truly useful service that makes customers for life.