Ryanair refuses to board a violin
NewsWith Ryanair, it’s almost as if they go to work each day wondering how to inflict more distress on their passengers.
This just in from the violinist Esther Abrami:
Today I was refused boarding on a Ryanair flight with my 200 years old violin today. On my way to Berlin, departing from Marseille to record my third album with @sonyclassical, this is the first time I have experienced such rudeness and public humiliation.
Just before boarding the flight I was stopped and told I could not board on with my violin. I offered to pay whatever it would cost to take it with me, they refused. I offered to buy an extra seat, they said the flight was closed already and I could not buy an extra seat anymore (despite the flight not being full).
They said the only option was to check it in with the LUGGAGES or just leave at the airport (!!).
I explained the price and the fragility of the violin.
I begged them, explaining I was recording this very same day for my album, telling that I had flown an incredible number of times with this company and never experienced this.
It came to the point where I even offered to take my violin out of the case, keeping its fabric protection and just carry it by hand and keeping it on me during the whole flight whilst they put the case in the cargo.
They made me open my case on the floor, put the violin in the place to measure suitcases. The requirements for the cabin luggage -which I had paid for already- is a length of 55cm. My violin measures 56cm, it fitted diagonally, and otherwise was 1cm over. Even this was refused.
And yet, I still feel incredibly fortunate that I could book a last minute ticket on an other flight, with an other company, on the same day. Not every musician can have this opportunity.
Missing a flight often means losing a vital work opportunity, whether it’s a gig, a recording session, or an important meeting.
In an industry where every opportunity counts, such an incident can have a ripple effect, impacting reputation and future prospects. This is simply inacceptable.
Two points:
Ryanair is a budget airline. Any budget product will be basic in service and quality. Don’t go to McDonald’s and ask for the wine list.
There’s a wider problem though. Interest in and respect for classical music is low due to a number of factors, major ones being education and lack of coverage by broadcasting companies (including the BBC, which should know better). As a result, many employees will simply see a violin as an old fashioned bit of wood used to produce that boring music that nobody listens to. Who cares, so long as your smartphone is safe?
Sad but true Iain…
Then how is it that she had flown on Ryanair several previous times, without a problem? Also note many similar instances of arbitrary imposition of such restrictions by many full-price, nominally full-service, airlines…
Rules are inconsistently applied the world over. If the policy is in the fine print when you buy the ticket, you have to be prepared to comply.
Difficult to feel sorry for her.
She says herself: the cabin luggage limit is 55 cm and her violin is 56 cm. She tried to go cheap and hoped nobody would notice, then complained when she didn’t get her way.
If she really cared she would have booked a second seat for her violin, as many musicians do. She’s blaming everyone but herself. Sad.
Can’t read, can you? It says in the srticle above “I offered to buy an extra seat, they said the flight was closed already and I could not buy an extra seat anymore (despite the flight not being full).”
Buying an extra seat is something you do when booking your own flight. Not when you get „caught” trying to go cheap on a fully booked flight. So the point stands – she should have had bought an extra seat if she cared.
We can all read. She didn’t offer to buy a second seat UNTIL her plan to fly with oversize luggage was thwarted. I can think of a couple of legitimate reasons why the airline might have refused to book the second seat. First, it may have been too late to book the seat. Second, the airline may want to prevent gamesmanship on the part of passengers who like to throw the dice and see if they can board with oversize luggage without purchasing a seat and only pay for it when caught out.
No one is forced to fly RyanAir. It offers very cheap fares on the basis that people will abide by the luggage limitations and thereby not increase the flying costs for everyone else.
Read more carefully.
She only offered to buy a seat after she got caught. She had the chance to do so when she booked her ticket and didn’t bother.
Her fault! 😉
My advice to the violinist and all other musicians who have experienced arbitrary refusals to carry their instruments onboard, when on the exact same flight, a week or two earlier, there was no problem….I would suggest that at your next concert, you dedicate the concert to all musicians who are abused and arbitrarily refused to fly just because they carry an instrument. Make sure that the audience knows your story, the name of the airline and what happened…have it filmed by a friend in the audience, post it online and send a copy to the airline customer relations department. Only when they are publicly named and shamed will this never-ending situation be resolved and clarified once and for all.
Not sure I endorse this particular approach, but I do think musicians need to get the word out there to audiences broader than the niche audience for this blog. Somebody must know a journo who could take on this issue. They need to get the problem out there, and discussed, and protested, and airlines with inconsistent applications of their rules named and shamed — and, as has been pointed out, musicians travelling with instruments must familiarise themselves with the rules.
This instance was Ryanair, but for years I have read of one artist after another getting screwed up by various airlines because undertrained, uncaring, underpaid ground and even flight staff do not adhere to company policy, or apply it differently from week to week. It is industry-wide.
It is up to the complainants to do something about getting this out there and, with the fullest respect to Slippedisc.com, it is inside, not out there.
And Ryanair will not care one iota.
The point is, what is needed is enough public illumination of the problem for the governing authorities over airlines to step in with a mandated directive as to what they can do. Principally, that once an airline sets a policy, it can NOT be overriden by a hireling having a bad day.
I have 2 rules in life which I adhere to rigidly, 1 don’t bomb Muslim countries and 2 don’t fly Ryanair. No 1 is more theoretical, as I don’t have a choice in the matter.
NEVER fly Ryanair under any circumstances.
It seems cheap but it costs too much in the long run.
Ryanair. Obviously.
Please do not fly with Ryanair anymore
But Ruinair flies from near me to many destinations i need, unserved by main airlines. I don’t carry any instrument but have never had the slightest problem with them, unlike Brishit Airways, losing my luggage twice, Luftwanker losing it once, and Kuwait Airlines ceasing to exist in mid-Atlantic!
Ryanair never allows violins onboard unless an extra seat is bought for them. She should have totally known this, it is not rocket science. She took an immense risk showing up with only one seat purchased. Violinists who genuinely travel loads would have known this about Ryanair.
She offered to buy a seat and was refused. There were seats available.
Boarding was closed so no seats to be purchased.
She knew the rules. She has risked it a lot previously and got away with it. On this occasion she got caught.
Respectfully this has nothing to do with lack of respect for music etc. It’s an unfortunate, but fair outcome. Every other passenger on the flight has to comply with their strict baggage rules or face the consequences. There are plenty of reminders during the booking and online check-in processes.
I would never dream of flying Ryanair with a musical instrument.
Every violinist knows that when flying with Ryanair, you need to buy a separate seat for your violin. She tried to avoid this and was rightfully denied boarding. There’s no reason to blame Ryanair for enforcing their policy!
She offered to buy one, albeit late. Their refusal may have been because booking seriously was closed — a genuine issue — or just obstructionism. Given that the flight had empty seats, they might have obliged.
Again, Air Canada back when…I was on a very early flight out west in Canada on a job. I was given a seat next to another traveller — they may have anticipated the flight would fill, but it did not. Before take-off, the attendant came and said, if you want to sleep for a while (it was about 6:00 a.m.) you can stretch out in Row whatever, some rows ahead, as there is nobody there. She pulled down the arm rests and I got to stretch out completely, under a nice blanket, with a pillow, and she whispered that there would be coffee for me when I awoke. A similar offer was made to others, as the flight was near-empty.
Can you imagine that today?
Trinity Violin Travel Set.
Nobody sees your violin anymore.
Famous artists use it f.e. with Strads and Del Gesus.
Easy solution.
Frustrating as this sounds – actually Ryanair are actually pretty clear in their rules – you need to book a second seat for a violin case. They are the only airline I know who demand this but it has been that way for years – I used to book lots of travel for string quartets back when Ryanair was super cheap and it was often cheaper to buy eight seats on Ryanair for a quartet than four plus cello seat on a national carrier.
Sounds to me like she has just been very lucky but in future she should follow Ryanair’s guidance:
https://help.ryanair.com/hc/en-gb/articles/12889013645713-What-music-equipment-can-I-bring-on-board
The problem is airline — it is OK and other times it is not OK. That seems to be the made worse when sometimes — on the same situation here, just the whim that day of the tin hat you’re stuck dealing with.
There is nothing wrong with trying to save money — particularly when the exact same things can and does happen on a premium price airline.
Dating back to an era — dinosaurs roamed the earth — when the heads of airlines were the sorts of well-educated folks who also supported and attended the local symphony or art museum, cellist Gregor Piatigorsky armed himself with letters from the presidents of all the major airlines (and there were a lot of them back then) stating that he had the right to bring his cello case on the plane.
It occurs to me that rock musicians must have many of the same problems with their instruments and that if the public shaming tactic worked it would have already been tried by them with even more public notice. We might sneer at an electric guitar versus a Strad or Bergonzi, but look at the auction prices for those guitars if they’d been played by a celebrity owner.
I think most rock musicians fly by private jet.
Some, not most.
Other advice: travel less, serve local audiences more.
Not remotely helpful. If you have not noticed, concerts of all sizes have had problems filling seats for some time now. Offering more of the same seems to be counterproductive.
Artists tour for artistic enrichment but also simply for employment opportunities. And this artist was off to make a recording, so your comment is even less relevant.
You’re confusing issues.
Sony was not about to move its recording studio to Marseilles for Ms. Abrami’s convenience.
Every airline has different rules which is annoying. However, Ryanair does specify on their website, “For smaller music equipment like guitars or violins that exceed your cabin baggage dimensions, you can opt to pay an extra seat fare for it.” I guess rules are rules, but putting a guitar and violin in the same category is absolutely ridiculous.
Why? They are both musical instruments and when it comes to their being baggage there is no class distinction.
I remember the old days of friendly travel. My father gave me his guitar when his fingers got too arthritic to play it, and I was flying home with it. When I checked in I asked advice of the check-in clerk. She said to take it aboard as it could get bounced around in checked baggage (not a consoling thought, when you consider why that would happen…).
When I boarded, the flight attendant said to give it to her and she would put it safely in a cupboard where it could stand up, as that would be better for it and I would not have to worry about someone sharing an overhead jostling it.
When I left, she was standing there waiting for me with my guitar (in its case), beaming.
Air Canada. In days of yore.
But it’s impossible to take seriously a violinist who would fly Ryanair on assignment for a professional engagement. What, is she a college student? If her career is worth reporting about, she ought to at least have taken the trouble to fly a real airline. You get what you pay for, and an artist must invest in their own work to be taken seriously. No sympathy here.
There are few direct flights to Berlin by bigger Airlines. If you do not want to spend a ridiculous amount of time for a relatively short fly you need to use cheap airline.
A friend of mine travels from England to southern Europe pretty much every month and almost always uses RyanAir. He is thoroughly conversant with their rules, restrictions, etc., and has learned how to manage them. He has not cited a problem in years.
All musicians know this about Ryanair, it’s completely general knowledge…
LOL no one in Sony Classical considered that traveling with Ryanair could be risky
I mean SONY signed her and are recording her (third recording with them?) so no surprise they are clueless about the airline as well.
TikTok violin “soloist” recording contracts.
Ryanair is a pretty decent airline that goes to far more destinations more conveniently and cheaper than most legacy carriers.
They’re very clear and always have been about their carry-on policies and also specifically about musical instruments.
Always amazes me how classical musicians arrogantly feel themselves to be above the rules simply by virtue of what their job is.
Hate to break it to you, but you’re not out there saving lives.
If you’ve misread the rules, didn’t know them or tried to flout them and failed, take it on the chin and mea culpa it.
“In an industry where every opportunity counts, such an incident can have a ripple effect, impacting reputation and future prospects. This is simply inacceptable. [sic]”
Unbelievable arrogant Main Character Syndrome going on here.
“Always amazes me how classical musicians arrogantly feel themselves to be above the rules simply by virtue of what their job is.”
100% agree. The rules are very clearly stated if musicians can be bothered to read them and understand them.
There’s a response above with many likes suggesting a concert dedicated to the instrument carrying ‘victims’ of these airlines to effect a change.
That should give you some insight into the naivety that prevails on so many levels!
The problem is that their policies differ from those of other airlines, and one can see how someone might make the wrong assumption, that it’ll be happily accepted as cabin baggage for no additional fee.. But traveling with an instrument, one is not a typical traveler, and if you want a smooth travel experience (relatively speaking), the burden falls on you to understand the details and plan accordingly. I’d go one further and say it isn’t just travel with an instrument, it’s travel for an occasion where you absolutely, positively have to be there on time — the instrument just makes for more possibilities of things going wrong.
This is (unfortunately) just their policies. I have flew so many times with Ryanair but always, always, always purchased a second ticket for my violin! I would never ever have dared to try to fly with the violin as a 40x20x25 hand luggage…
How long is the train journey from Marseille to Berlin?
You could do it by train, theoretically, in about 14 hours, hoping for no strikes or vandalism on lines! You’d have to change at least twice (Brussels & Frankfurt). There’d be other, more complicote routes, more direct but slower with more changes, (and more pictureskew..Black Forest views, etc…).
So, depart Marseille about 6h, arrive Berlin about 20h.
Marseille
Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe
Berlin
TGV / ICE
12h20
Very optimistic! I missed the connexion several times thru lateth, often had to change at Straßburg and/or Mannheim. Don’t rely on either TGV or ICE for punctuality… But yes, in theory….
Forever with DB which is very unreliable. Hours of delay and connection lost is standard
Several hours.
While the shameful event may easily be associated with a deplorable lack of appreciation for classical music played on instruments with character, it seems (to me, at least) that this airline banks on a certain percentage of their passengers not fulfilling their very strict luggage policy by the letter, – apparently – giving them the excuse to refuse carriage on the spot.
What most people don’t know: aircraft fuel consumption goes down in proportion of the weight of the aircraft. A flight thus costs less fuel (money) the lighter the payload is.
In Ryanair’s view, the fewer passengers make it to the plane (along with their luggage), the better that flight will fare from an economic point of view.
Thus, I wouldn’t be too quick to bash the gate attendants’ as musically illiterate, or the Esther Abrami to be at fault.
The whole problem might just be company policy…
The problem is when Ryanair and other airlines state a policy, which travellers often carry with them in a printout, and ground staff and flight crews decline to honour it. This has happened again and again.
In this case, if the several posters who clearly have experience with Ryanair are to be believed, the airline now has a clear policy that violins must have seats bought. AND that most musicians are familiar with this policy (or should be).
It looks as if Ms. Abrami decided to try to save herself an airfare, but was thwarted; her offer to buy an extra seat came after bookings were closed. The staff may have seen this stunt before; though I might have hoped they could be more flexible (given my happy experiences flying back when customer service was a high priority), they were clearly within their rights not to accommodate her.
Follow social media and you’ll see these STARS from Sony, DG, etc are all flying to Berlin, London, etc on the likes of RyanAir, Easyjet, Vueling and the such.
Long gone are the days in which Karajan flew his own plane.
Let that sink in.
Since music is free, there it not a lot extra to fly with a real airline.
By the time you have reached the point of circling waiting to land in a Ryanair flight, you know you have entered the eight circle of Hell that Dante never imagined yet somehow O’Leary (Ryanair CEO) and his minions effortlessly brought to reality. Avoid, avoid, avoid. With or without instruments.
…as sorry as I am for Mrs. Abrami: almost every musician knows about Ryanair’s way to treat violins/violas/guitars on board for years. Extra seats have to be purchased in advance…..
Unfortunately Ryanair serve many smaller airports in Europe and offer direct links otherwise unavailable.
The Trinity case was originally designed to take a 56 cm violin diagonally within the 55 cm allowed length, looking like a standard cabin suitcase (the handle was the bow case so didn’t fold down, but airline staff never notice that and it easily slotted into the overhead compartments). However I have no idea whether Ryanair have subsequently changed their cabin bag allowed dimensions, if they have it would follow their usual policy of frustrating passengers.
Miss Abrami is a serious violinist who must have travelled with her violin before many many times, she will have had a fair idea of what has previously been acceptable.
Just a thought. Would Dolly Parton, say, have been treated the same way if she had been carrying a guitar? Taylor Swift likewise? Even Maxim Vengerov, Hilary Hahn or Nige (remember him?) carrying violins?
OK, I doubt that these last three would be recognised by Ryanair staff, but supposing they were? Oh, and what about Oasis, all with guitars? Or are these rules only enforced for those such as a young but outstanding classical performer who has decided not to be a ‘celeb’? Had it been Oasis, I bet the staff would be grovelling at their feet and the group would have been pictured on future Ryanair adverts. But then again, Oasis could have induced Ryanair to waive the rules in exchange for a couple of tickets for their next gig – which would have been worth more than Esther Abrahmi’s Vuillaume violin at current rates…
How likely is it that Dolly Parton, Taylor Swift, Maxim Vengerov, Hilary Hahn or Oasis would ever be found near a Ryannair flight? Never! The pop singers in that group would all be on private jets. Oasis probably flies on quite a large chartered plane along with all the massive amount of technical gear they require for concerts. And as for Oasis providing a couple of concert freebies, I assume that is a joke given one of the groups recent comments about ticket prices,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAg0lUYHHFc
Thanks — great fun! And on point…
The Ryanair crew had watched too many mob movies.
I’ve never flown on RyanAir, with or without an instrument. I’ve flown a number of other airlines with valuable instruments, however, in oblong single violin cases, and combination violin/viola cases, cello cases in their own seat, and I have violin dealer friends who travel with quad violin cases. Sometimes it is easy, other than lugging the damn thing, but often it is not. And if there is some snafu with overzealous enforcement of the rules, or gate agent/flight crew that do not seem to care what the rules are, it becomes quite unpleasant. As a result of that, I don’t make any assumption that “it’s always been fine” holds true! I actually check the rules when booking that ticket. Had a certain violinist (I use the term generously) done so, she would have known of the requirement to buy another ticket, and most likely there would have been no drama. Upon arriving, she could have done some more careful intonation practice. There’s the old joke about someone having a “face for radio” which she inverts in a way. She’s an attractive young woman who owes her career prospects to youtube making it possible to display her physical charms to a large audience that would not have any interest in recordings without visuals. In an audition with a screen, I don’t think she would advance very often! It is perhaps not a kind thing to say, but she’s the one who put up all of the videos that led me to that conclusion.
she is worth between 1-5
million dollars. what is she
keeping the money for.
inheritance tax.
How to succeed in business by Michael O’Leary
The customer is ALWAYS wrong.
This is not just Ryanair. It happens on United and plenty of other more expensive airlines. Violins and violas need to go above the seats. Same thing happened to a trumpet friend. It’s very stressful.
Everybody knows that if you fly in that horrible airline with a violin you need to buy an extra seat.
One point which seems not yet to have been mentioned is this: why would any serious artist wait until the morning prior to making a recording later that day before travelling? Even if everything had gone swimmingly with Ryannair, what would have happened had there been a technical fault with the aircraft and a seriously delayed departure? What if air traffic controllers had decided to strike? And so on. It seems to me that any artist leaving travel so late for what was obviously an important recording session is just asking for trouble. If a “gig” is so important, get there the night before, stay in an inexpensive hotel, be refreshed and fully ready for the “gig” without any serious issues going through your mind about the travel panic – and high additional costs – earlier in the day.