taking a guitar

[stephb]

Hi all,
hope everyone has had nice christmases! I found it sort of odd, every now and again realising this was the last one (touch wood) for the forseeable future where I'd still be in England... Weird, but sort of exciting!
Anyway, onto my question ;) When I finally head to Adelaide I want to take my guitar with me. I have heard its possible to check this into the hold as special luggage, so it goes separately to the other bags and (hopefully) survives the flight in tact! Has anyone ever done this who might be able to confirm if this is the case, and if so if it actually is safe? The guitar is not that expensive but has sentimental value so want to be pretty confident before i go!
Thanks :D
Steph

[sarahsmartiepants]

Hi all,
hope everyone has had nice christmases! I found it sort of odd, every now and again realising this was the last one (touch wood) for the forseeable future where I'd still be in England... Weird, but sort of exciting!
Anyway, onto my question ;) When I finally head to Adelaide I want to take my guitar with me. I have heard its possible to check this into the hold as special luggage, so it goes separately to the other bags and (hopefully) survives the flight in tact! Has anyone ever done this who might be able to confirm if this is the case, and if so if it actually is safe? The guitar is not that expensive but has sentimental value so want to be pretty confident before i go!
Thanks :D
Steph

I would think you can, would it not go down as part of your baggage allowance? We shipped our daughters 2 guitars, they arived safe and sound.
sarah

[Django]

Mine are going in the container. Going to remove all the strings as temperatures can reach extremes inside the big metal box. Will have enough to lug into the airport with 4 kids in tow.

Pete

[Nick11]

We forgot to pack my daughters in the container before we flew out. I rang the airline and they said it would be classed in our baggage allowance - as we were going to be about 30kgs over - decided it wasn't worth it - they then went onto waffle something about excess etc and the pounds signs started to add up - at the end of the day we decided it would be cheaper to buy a new one once we got out here!
Personally I wouldn't trust a guitar to get here in one piece.

[stephb]

thanks for the advice guys! i have been emailing airlines this week, to ask a bit more about their views about this, but so far had one acknowledgement out of two airlines emailed, and no actual replies at all! customer service eh?!:o

[jimmyspromow]

Hello mate

I used to work for Virgin Atlantic at Heathrow and often dealt with this issue , you can do a couple of things depending on the Airline !.

1- Check it in to the hold from check in with Fragile tags and it should be loaded last , but make sure it is in a hard case and well tagged .

2-Ask the check-in agent if you can take it to the Boarding gate and then check it in at the boarding gate , this guarantees it is the last of the items loaded and will reduce the chances of being damaged by other bags bieng loaded on top.

3-When you get it threw to the boarding gate ask the Supervisor to check if you can put it in the upper class cuboard which is bassicly a big cuboard that upper class passengers have to take on what they wish .Usually if the flight is quite and you get a friendly sup you can do this .

Good Luck