Photo by Lui Junqi
"The incident is yet another in a long and sordid history of the airline industry’s complete lack of respect for and understanding of musicians and their livelihood."
That's a broad, but mostly correct generalization from Musical America's Susan Elliott in telling the sad story of US Airways' nasty handling of an important music instrument:
Pipa virtuoso Wu Man’s instrument, worth $50,000 and made specifically for her by "the top instrument-maker in China," according to Wu, was badly damaged by a US Airways flight attendant, apparently without apology. On a connecting flight from Philadelphia to New Haven, Wu was attempting to store her precious instrument in the overhead compartment. This being a 35-seat plane, the pipa did not fit, so the flight attendant offered to put it in the coat closet."I watched her walk to the front of the plane with it," said Wu in a phone interview, "and I heard a crash. I knew immediately what had happened." Wu ran to the front to investigate, but the attendant had already shut the closet door, presumably so Wu wouldn’t see the damaged goods. Wu managed to open it herself and saw to her horror that her earlier hunch had been correct.
"The flight attendant didn’t even apologize," said Wu. "She told me I should put the [broken] instrument in cargo or get off the plane. So I got off the plane."
Wu ended up on a later flight, larger plane, to Hartford. The grounds people in Philly had instructed her to file a damage claim when she reached Hartford. When she tried, she was told that, since there was no claim ticket — which of course there wasn’t since she had taken the broken pipa with her onboard — they could do nothing to help her. But they did manage to give her a form to fill out and an 800 number to call.
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Asked for a statement, a U.S. Airways spokesman said simply, "We’re aware of the complaint and customer relations is reaching out to her."The incident is yet another in a long and sordid history of the airline industry’s complete lack of respect for and understanding of musicians and their livelihoods.