The German violinist Carolin Widmann played in a concerto in Finland in November and set off for a quick trip home before a performance in Vienna. But at the airport in Helsinki, she was faced with a conundrum: what to do with her centuries-old violin.
As she tried to board a Lufthansa flight, an airline employee said that her violin case was too long to fit in the cabin. Despite her protests, the only option for transporting the multimillion-dollar instrument was to remove it, buy a second seat on the flight to Frankfurt and hold it on a connecting flight to Leipzig, her hometown.
Ms. Widmann had to protect the instrument, a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin made in Turin, Italy, in 1782, from the risk of spills, jostling passengers, and turbulence in multiple planes, as well as through security checks and bus transfers in the ice and snow.
“I took off my sweater and wrapped the sweater around my violin,” Ms. Widmann, 49, said in an interview. “Completely unprotected, this incredibly valuable instrument.”
She could not leave it unattended to use the restroom.
“This is more than an instrument,” she said. “It is cultural heritage. It is like having a Van Gogh painting, bare in your hands.”
Ms. Widmann, who travels for up to 60 concerts a year, filed a complaint with the Lufthansa station manager at Helsinki Airport in Finland and through the Lufthansa airline group’s website, she said. She published an open letter to its chief executive, Carsten Spohr, spoke with management, and kept track of her efforts on social media, where thousands of musicians replied with support or shared similar stories.
By February, as Ms. Widmann described it, her ordeal had “struck a chord.”
As of March 1, Lufthansa Group, citing “customer feedback,” said it would be applying “a new, more generous” carry-on policy for small instruments, such as violins, trumpets or ukuleles.
The change means that the entire dimensions of the hand luggage — its height, width and depth — cannot exceed 125 centimeters when added together. “This means that instruments longer than the regular maximum length of 55 centimeters can also be taken on board,” Lufthansa said in an email.
For Ms. Widmann’s violin case, the 80-centimeter length alone was used to determine its viability in the cabin.
Lufthansa’s policy change is part of efforts by the airline industry to address the challenges musicians face when flying. In a meeting of European Parliament members, musicians and aviation executives in Brussels on Feb. 23, Nicola Zingaretti, the Italian head of the Democratic Party, said Ms. Widmann’s experience showed how “a single incident can become a catalyst for change.”
Musical instruments are “not normal luggage,” he told the meeting.
But unifying regulations would be a complex task, considering the multiple airports, ground staff and airlines across the bloc. “The problem is not just around the policies,” David Webster, of the British Musicians Union, said at the event. “It is around the understanding of the policies and how we educate gate staff.”
Valentina Scheldhofen Ciardelli, a double bass musician, presented the Parliament members with a petition signed by more than 8,200 independent and orchestral musicians from around the world that seeks clear rules about the transport of instruments and less discretionary applications of them.
She said that she protested last month when an official at London Stansted Airport tried to open the case holding her bows, which are delicate and can be altered by the fabric of gloves or the natural oil of a person’s hand.
”If you open an instrument case you compromise the function of the instrument itself,” Ms. Scheldhofen Ciardelli said in an interview. “It could move or fall down. It is really like managing a piece of art.”
She praised the regulations adopted at Heathrow Airport in London in August, allowing musicians to handle their instrument cases during inspections.
“This demonstrates that meaningful change is possible without compromising security standards,” she said.
Ms. Widmann said that it was a lack of uniform regulations that made her experience so unusual in Finland, where ground and airline staff approached with a measuring tape. She relented by removing the violin and checking the case with only her bows, still worth tens of thousands of dollars.
“I don’t want to break the rules,” she said in the interview. “But it is not enough to say that it won’t happen again.”
Sampo Paukkeri, the managing director of Airpro, which handles aviation services in Helsinki, said passengers must choose from existing policy options when issues arise with their luggage.
“We understand that transporting valuable instruments on an aircraft can be a stressful situation for a passenger, and we do our best to ensure everything goes well.,” he said in an email, when asked about Ms. Widmann’s incident. “However, we cannot deviate from the airline’s instructions on a case-by-case basis.”
As The Strad, a music publication, and news organizations, including in Finland and Italy, spread Ms. Widmann’s story, it resonated with the international community of musicians who carry, wheel, and stow instruments on airplanes, buses and trains.
Musicians share tips online about how to travel, particularly on airplanes with their instruments, from the unwieldy, like a saxophone or horn, to the oversized, like a cello. Many instruments barely fit as carry-on items, or do not fit at all. They are invariably fragile.
In the United States, musicians are advised to check with airlines about large items, a spokesman of the Transportation Security Administration said. Brass instruments must be in checked bags, while violins, drum sticks and guitars can be carry-ons after hand inspection, the T.S.A. says.
Ben Kessler, of the American Federation of Musicians, said musicians can ask via T.S.A. Cares for a supervisor to be involved in advance of their flight.
“If someone is traveling with a literally priceless violin, the anxiety of that process is significant,” he said in an interview.
Lucas Phillips, 32, a musician in Massachusetts, said that he had worked out a way, domestically, to transport his double bass, which is over five feet tall. In his Toyota Camry sedan, he tilts the front seat, slides the instrument in, and turns it so the bottom rests on the dashboard.
But the complications of traveling have discouraged him from touring abroad. The last time he did so, he borrowed a bass for a jazz festival in Panama rather than risk taking his own.
When transiting through Newark Liberty International Airport, his companions were told to check their saxophones. They refused, a captain intervened, and they eventually found space in the cabin, he said.
“No musician in their right mind would let their instrument be checked,” he said.
Christine Hauser is a Times reporter who writes breaking news stories, features and explainers.
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