Airline Policy for tubas

[sgtuba]

Hello I was wondering if anyone out there knew what the airline policy was for taking your tuba on the plane? I am having to fly to an area with a tuba in a gig bag. Will they allow you to buy another seat on the plane and allow you to put the tuba in the seat or do they still require you to check it in to luggage?

[Donn]

You can find some anecdotal information from 2006 here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13569.

(There's some other possibly interesting stuff here, but oddly you must use an external search engine to find the one I'm looking at, and then read its cached copy - might have been pulled or something, though I can't see why.)

I don't have any personal experience. I would check with the airline, since each may have a different policy, but as I understand it the flight crew makes the final decision, so there will be an element of uncertainty anyway.

[sgtuba]

Thank you very much for your help of directing me to those posts. That gives me a few good ideas on how to handle this. Thank you again.

[sousakrue]

I have flown with the tuba in a gigbag and just bought another seat for the tuba. Call the airline and make sure before you purchase the seat but for me the only requirement that they had was that it had to "wear a seatbelt" haha. Many times they will make you sit in the first row because it has a little more room (for handicapped passengers and this type of thing) but there was no problem for me in flying with the horn on the plane. Sometimes they will even allow you to put it in the pilot's cabinet.

[tubadavid94]

When I flew to Tucson, AZ for ITEC last year(U.S. Airways) I purchased a seat beside mine and with little trouble put the horn in the seat and strapped it in as if it were a person. This is a much safer method than shipping the horn!