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Let the curbside check in guys handle it. I give them a crisp $50.00 bill and they will personally put the horn on the plane, overlooking the extra charges and taking special care with your horn. You have to pay for it, but if you treat people nice (cash money) they'll take care of you.

This is not exactly answering your question... but if you just buy a seat for your tuba you can avoid buying a flight case, paying oversize and overweight fees ($150-300 roundtrip), and you save on tuba repair bills. You also get two bags of pretzels when you explain that your friend in the seat next to you is also hungry.

bloke wrote: If I had to fly "with" my tubas, I'd drop them off at the *Greyhound Station http://www.shipgreyhound.com the day before I left, so they would be there waiting for me when I got there. Overseas flight?...

Except there was that guy a couple years ago who shipped his $10k tuba via Greyhound and never saw it again; they even had no tracking system to know where it went astray. So...Greyhound is fine if you have good insurance and are not overly attached to your particular tuba.

MA, who hasn't taken a tuba anywhere yet out of town, and who did not find the Johnson case she bought (and returned) secure enough to fly with.

MaryAnn wrote:did not find the Johnson case she bought (and returned) secure enough to fly with.

What problems did you have with it? You are the only person I know who has had a Johnson Case fail them.

LV wrote:How do you secure a horn in a gig bag to the seat? An inquiring mind wants to know!

I use a seatbelt extension to strap the tuba down. The seatbelt extension is the belt they use to do the pre-flight seatbelt demo.

Most airlines I have flown recently want the tuba to be in a window bulkhead seat... and this is easy, the tuba just goes on the floor, bell up, valves front, and you can wrap the seatbelt (with extension) around the instrument and maybe through the handle. It is very solid this way. If I am in a normal seat, I wrap the seatbelt around it the same way, but the tuba needs to be upside down (bell on seat) to fit.

Just got back from the trip. I was 1 for 2 on this one, didn't get charged on my departure but got hit with $80 on the return. Checked in online both times and went to the self-service check-in. In Nashville (departure), they didn't even look twice at it, asked me to roll it around to the side and I was good to go.

A question was brought up about the Johnson cases. They should definitely stand up to the abuse of transit, but don't overlook protecting the bell. I received an instrument for repair just before Christmas that was packed in a Johnson case, and the bell had a couple of creases in it. thankfully, I was going to repair the instrument anyway, and it was unlacquered, so the repairs did not show. But, to avoid the same thing happening on the return trip, I filled the bell of the instrument with bubble wrap, enough-so that the bell rim could not hit the end of the case unless there was a force strong enough to break the case itself.
Rudolf Meinl, Jr. taught me that trick, for which I'll forever be grateful. If you pack the interior of the bell flare to where the bell rim cannot hit the end of the case, the tuba is likely to be safe in any kind of case. I received this advice from Rudi, Jr. when I was flying back to the US from Deutschland with a brand-new Rudi 3/4 CC in a lightweight molded hard case. Packed in this manner, the instrument traveled with no damage whatsoever, not even a noticeable scratch on the case (thank-you, Delta!)

Last November I flew Delta from Hartford to Tampa with my tuba in a hard case and was charged $25 for being over 50 pounds. On the return flight nobody worried about the weight and there was no problem. This past weekend I flew from Hartford to Decatur by way of St Louis, and back. It was still about 56 pounds but nobody made me pay extra. It's just the luck of the draw. But even the $25 was a reasonable fee.