Help! Some advice on shipping my sousaphone!

[tubalooney]

Hello everybody!
Can anyone help with some ideas on how to ship my sousaphone by sea from Philadelphia to Switzerland?
It's a Conn 20 k in its original case. Shipping by air is prohibitively expensive around the $1500 mark....
I'm looking for a freight forwarder I suppose.
Any ideas gratefully received.
Thanks
Phillip

[tubalooney]

Great thanks very much!
Kind regards
Phillip

[Donn]

Was the $1500 quote for air freight on a pallet? Seems a little high even for that. If there's a possibility you could find air freight on a pallet at a comparable cost to the baggage deal, it's obviously a better ride for the sousaphone, and there's no issue with maximum baggage size on trans-Atlantic flights. I suppose it helps a little, costwise, if you can box it up and strap it to the pallet yourself.

[butch]

Are you flying with it? If yes, you can check it in as additional baggage. It should be no problem that it's oversize, because it's a musical instrument. At least it was no problem with British Airways.

Butch

[butch]

( I don't know what the import costs were)

It's 8% VAT and about 30 swiss francs for writing the bill.

[tubalooney]

Talk with timswisstuba (or whatever Tim's SN is) he has had to ship instruments across the ocean. When I shipped my jazzophone, I put it into two boxes and used USPS, shipping cost was around $200 ( I don't know what the import costs were)

Tim's a friend of mine and he's just shipped a load of stuff in a container over here but I missed it by about two weeks :-/
Thanks for all the advice
Phillip