Taking a guitar on Easyjet

Ungulate

Any experience?

I'm embracing 3 of my passions - guitar, cycling & foreign climates, by moving to Spain for at least the next month.
Easyjet let me buy my guitar a seat next to me as long as it's in the name of Mr Musical Instrument! 

My top of the range road bike is in a box in the hold, but the guitar stays with me, any of you done this? Struggling to book the guitar in on line as it doesn't have a passport! 

Fingers657

It won’t get anything to drink or eat and can’t use the toilet.

No special treatment.

Winny_Pooh

Flew a guitar with them July 2023. I put "musical instrument" as the name and my passport details.

Devil#20

I brought my Stratocaster back from the states and they let me put it in the locker with the captains jacket. No charge. American Airlines. This would be about 1999 or maybe 2000. 

elstoof

You’ll be lucky to find room in the captains locker on an easyJet A320

p90fool

I'd probably just order a hundred quid guitar from Thomann when I arrived to be honest.
Give it away when you leave. 

Neil

p90fool said:

I'd probably just order a hundred quid guitar from Thomann when I arrived to be honest.
Give it away when you leave. 

This is the best idea IMO.

Other than that, If you are taking your guitar with you see if you have a receipt or something to show Customs on the way back inward bound in case they think you bought it abroad.

SlopeSoarer

p90fool said:

I'd probably just order a hundred quid guitar from Thomann when I arrived to be honest.
Give it away when you leave. 

30 day return policy!  (not serious by the way)

robinbowes

I bought a Gibson LP-295 while on holiday in the South of France last year and brought it onto the plane as hand luggage.

It went in an overhead locker just fine.

R.

Misterg

I bought an Agile LP copy in the states and picked it up when I was over there on a work trip. Work were paying for business class, so there were no issues carrying it onboard. (It went in the overhead locker of a 747 and then into the Captains "wardrobe" = jacket locker on an A320(?)  )

What I wanted to say however, is that walking around the executive lounge in New York with a guitar case felt as cool as F***.

Yorkie

I did Manchester-Bilbao with them last summer, and spent one month there. I did toy with the idea of getting a cheap guitar while I was there. I shopped around a bit, but most electrics were overpriced crap. The flamenco guitars on the other hand… wow. I almost brought one of them back to York. Maybe I should have!

Jon

guitarjack66

I'd be careful. They might just make it Captain.

stickyfiddle

Never flown Easyjet with an instrument but I've had BA, Virgin & Etihad all put guitars in a safe cupboard for me a few times. Most cases will fit in an overhead, at least on widebodies, but they do tend to fill them up and piss off everyone around you..!

ScreamingDave

Neil said:

p90fool said:

I'd probably just order a hundred quid guitar from Thomann when I arrived to be honest.
Give it away when you leave. 

This is the best idea IMO.

Other than that, If you are taking your guitar with you see if you have a receipt or something to show Customs on the way back inward bound in case they think you bought it abroad.

It’s what I did when I worked in India for a year.  I bought a locally made guitar (a “Givson Jumboo” acoustic) and it did me fine for keeping the finger calouses hard, if nothing else. It was actually surprisingly good if you ignored the laughably bad finish

ICBM

Go to Spain.

Buy a cheap Spanish classical or flamenco guitar.

Immerse yourself in Spanish music and learn to play it. (/better, if you do already).

Donate it to charity before you come home.

Cheaper, safer and much more worthwhile than taking one of your own guitars.

Ungulate

Yorkie said:

I did Manchester-Bilbao with them last summer, and spent one month there. I did toy with the idea of getting a cheap guitar while I was there. I shopped around a bit, but most electrics were overpriced crap. The flamenco guitars on the other hand… wow. I almost brought one of them back to York. Maybe I should have!

Jon

Yep, I'm tempted to go back to my classical roots & pick one up, bring it back home halfway through my stay, OTOH, I may end up with a new road bike instead if I'm not careful!

Ungulate

ICBM said:

Go to Spain.

Buy a cheap Spanish classical or flamenco guitar.

Immerse yourself in Spanish music and learn to play it. (/better, if you do already).

Donate it to charity before you come home.

Cheaper, safer and much more worthwhile than taking one of your own guitars.

This is a plan!

Musical_Mystery_Tour

Unless you're planning to play gigs there and need a really decent instrument, just getting a cheap acoustic when you are there is probably a better idea, since it's ideal for a bit of impromptu entertaining as well as for practice.

Being a muso and working on loading aircraft and moving them about etc, I'm always careful with any musical instruments going on any aeroplanes I supervise operations on when they are going in the hold, and I make sure my team are too. But I can't speak for other handlers and whether or not they lob them down the hold or treat them with care as I do. It's DHL which are the agent for Sleazyjet at Manchester where I work, and so I don't do their flights at all because I work for Skytanking, which handles Air France, KLM, Brussels, Norwegian, SAS, Aegean, Turkish ad TAP, plus a few other small private charters for footy teams, bands on tour and the like.

So for precious instruments, the cabin is a better guarantee of things arriving intact. A decent hard case will certainly protect an instrument going in the hold, but the problem is not so much that, as the temperature in the hold of an A320 or A321, which is what Sleazyjet use. The holds do have heating, but you can only guarantee that will be turned on when there is an animal being transported in the hold and the crew have been advised of that on the NOTOC, which is unlikely on a Sleazyjet flight because they don't normally carry cargo.

Up at cruise altitude, the outside air temperature is -60, but on a two hour flight to Spain, that's not enough time for the temperature in the hold to drop anywhere near that low and so a hard case with a soft lining and some padding will insulate a guitar pretty well, but it is enough time for the temp to vary quite a lot, thus your case in a cargo hold can go from room temp, down to somewhere approaching freezing and back up to room temp in the space of less than two hours, and that's not great for musical instruments, obviously, so if anyone is doing that, I'd recommend at least slacking the strings off to stop them getting cold, contracting and pulling on the neck.

Ungulate

Thanks for that really informative reply, I've bought a seat for the guitar, in a hard case, all should be fine, I'm going to check the humidity in my apartment too when I arrive. Just can't be parted from a decent guitar for a month! 

Yorkie

p90fool said:

I'd probably just order a hundred quid guitar from Thomann when I arrived to be honest.
Give it away when you leave. 

Currently visiting my mum, who’s retired and living in Spain. So I’ve done the Thomann thing, except that the Harley Benton strat I’ve received is so stupidly playable that I’m going to leave it here at my mum’s. 

£90 for a red strat, gig bag and a set of strings, free delivery. Plus a three-month online thing — I think there’s even an app. Crazy stuff, mate. 

Jon

Power-Beef

Keep us posted, and hope you have a great time in Spain, whether or not you decide to come back, at all, if ever!

I am not exactly pooping bricks, but am keeping a casual glance on the CITES thing, as much as rosewood has been taken off of the naughty list, ebony hasn't, or has it?