<p>My audition is February 23rd. Just a little over a month!</p>
<p>Thanks Lorelei!</p>
<p>Good luck, dangnugyen.
I'm auditioning at Northwestern too (for classical piano). Did you receive your audition date already?</p>
<p>DS will be at Northwestern on the 20th of January. Good luck to everyone.</p>
<p>S25, mine's on the 23rd, don't know the time yet. I just called and they said that they would notify audition times 2 weeks before the requested audition date.</p>
<p>Oh, I see. I've been told that mine is on either the 23rd or the 24th of February. Not sure if I should book my flight yet...hm.</p>
<p>We try to buy a seat for my son's cello whenever possible. Jet Blue has been great, and he never had a problem getting through security with it.
He did fly with a music group on Air France to and from Europe; the cellos had seats and there was no problem.
We just returned from a vacation and he HAD to take his cello to prepare for auditions, but we couldn't purchase a seat. American Airlines. So I rented a BAM flight cover for his BAM case. He loosened the strings slightly and hand carried the bow in a bow case (TSA people look strangely at a cello bow, but then adjust and it's not been a problem).
The BAM case + Flight Cover are huge! NO gate check in allowed. The cello was not on the second flight (oversize) when we arrived at our destination. American Airlines delivered it to our vacation house the next day. It was fine. The return was fine too. Mostly, it was put into "oversize" at the baggage pickup. We were not charged extra for it, although that easily could have happened. I rented the BAM flight cover from johnson strings; not cheap but it worked this time.
Even though it worked out, we were anxious to say the least. If the cello had been damaged or lost, my son would have been devastated. I'd say, buy a seat for the cello and try not to fly Delta. Good luck!</p>
<p>American Airlines gave my daughter a hard time when she flew back to college in September. She had her (very small) purse, her computer bag, and a double case holding an oboe and English horn. They told her she could only carry TWO items on the plane. She couldn't fit the purse into her stuffed computer bag. She analyzed the situation in a short time and checked the computer. Her rationale...the computer cost $1200, the instruments $13,000. Good decision. The odd thing was that it was the second leg of her trip. She had no trouble from here to her first stop. The issue came when she was boarding her connecting flight. In the future when she flies American, she'll wear a jacket with LOTS of pockets for the "purse stuff". I can tell you, she was fuming...and worried. My son would get off of the plane before he would check his instruments.</p>
<p>mom4- I'll bet everyone was sweating that one out. I know my son was on pins and needles when they made him check his viola as baggage on a return leg from Arkansas this past summer.</p>
<p>As the situation with thumper's d illustrates, the instrument rules are nebulous and are enforced capriciously, solely at the whim of the airline personnel encountered. If you ask to speak with a supervisor, the first response is a threat to call security.</p>
<p>thump... smart girl. I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. ;)</p>
<p>My D has had no problems traveling with her bassoon. Most of the time, they will allow her to board with the "Elite" passengers, so that she is sure to get overhead space for it. One funny (sad) story... when she and my H were going to Vanderbilt for her audition, they got on the plane out of Newark, and found that the overhead was too small to fit the instrument! That was after MANY calls to the airline before the flight to ask that question and MANY assurances from the airline as to the dimensions of the overhead. That was the only size plane to fly to Nashville from Newark. The outcome was that they had to abandon the flight and the audition. The bassoon professor from Vandy called to say that she could use a borrowed instrument for the audition, but after thinking about the complications for 4 long years of traveling back and forth, D decided to withdraw her application. Things work out for a reason.</p>
<p>My daughter regularly flies with her cello and ALWAYS buys a ticket for it. It's expensive, sure, but comes with the territory and in her opinion is the only way to make sure the instrument arrives in one piece. </p>
<p>She has never had any trouble with TSA except for one time, shortly after 9/11, when a nervous baggage screener insisted she take the cello out of the case to go through the X-ray machine -- bridge side down! She didn't lose her temper but calmly explained that this would damage the instrument, and the screener relented.</p>
<p>One time, when she couldn't get a second ticket, she borrowed a flight case from somebody. She'll never do that again because during that entire trip she was stuck dragging around this immense thing that was bigger than she was.</p>
<p>My impression is that airlines usually seat the cello in a bulkhead seat but in recent years many seem to have relented on that a little bit and frequently assign the instrument to just a regular seat. My daughter has never had an airline refuse to sell a ticket to the instrument nor to give it a seat.</p>
<p>Because they don't assign seats and board in large groups, make sure you are in the first boarding group. You can download and print your boarding pass 24 hours before the flight leaves. We had the experience of boarding with a violin at the very end of the crowd. There was no space in the immediate overhead compartments so a flight attendant volunteered to put it in one of the compartments up front. Instead, he reappeared 3 minutes later with a check stub and informed us that he had stowed it in the belly. I had to have a tantrum in order to get them to give it special handling when it came off the plane. It was in a very ordinary case with no special packing inside and would certainly have broken had it gone on the conveyor belt. They were not at all nice about it. So, if flying SW, even with a violin, be very sure to board early!!!</p>