Last December, Virgin lost Lloyd Cole’s pedal board – which is a hard thing to replace at short notice when you’re touring from the UK. In July 2018, Justin Burford from End of Fashion had his guitar lost in transit, and claims Virgin Australia and Delta kept batting the blame back and forth. In March 2018, Linsday McDougall from Frenzal Rhomb asked Virgin Australia this reasonable question: “Any idea why your Brisbane Domestic baggage services isn’t answering their phone? I’d love my guitar before our show in two hours time.”
#Airline guitar old made by cracked#
In May 2017, Dave Graney’s guitar was cracked on a short domestic flight. You got elephants working as baggage handlers This guitar belonging to Jon English is totaled! /YFXVaLFxjJ “We take this matter extremely seriously and sincerely apologise to Jon English,” a spokesperson for Virgin Australia said in a statement, before going on to point out Virgin’s “musician-friendly policies.” This was the second incident in three months of “Virgin Airlines baggage handlers running over our musical instruments with their baggage trailers”, as English claimed. Both his guitar and case were “splintered”, and a road case containing a $5,000 keyboard was smashed to bits, to the extent where the metal parts were buckled. In January, 2016, Jon English flew Virgin Australia from Coffs to Sydney to perform on a sold-out Harbour cruise.
This is the best-case scenario I could find. He was good-natured about it all, even thanking the airline for helping him organise to replace the guitar they lost. In 2015, Virgin Australia lost Lee Kernigan’s acoustic in transit, and Alans Billy Hyde had to rush a backup guitar to his show. Now, when selecting these stories, I hadn’t intended to show bias in regards to airlines, but you’ll notice one keeps popping up with alarming regularity.
Even Daddos are not is totally devo his long life guitar case got damaged! #20years #devo /sEOOfr2xnU Musicians are a risky subset to anger at such rates. Celebrities with online followings, and profiles that require the media to write about their broken guitars. After all, it’s clear that airlines are fine with pissing off the general public, with the overselling of seats, delays and cancellations, and running out of dietary requirements mid-flight.īut these are celebrities they are upsetting here. Surely it’s a PR nightmare for the airlines, and one they would make drastic moves to stamp out.
People smuggle heroin into countries more secure than Fort Knox, but try to get a guitar from Sydney to Melbourne, I dare you. Anecdotally there doesn’t seem to be any other item being routinely destroyed during transit. There are no obvious answers to why guitars in metallic cases self-combust at such a rate. Regardless, I’m yet to hear a single acceptable reason for why airlines keep breaking music instruments at such a high rate. Maybe it’s always been happening at this rate, and it’s thanks to social media that we are all hearing about it more.