‘Tears Were Rolling Down My Cheeks’: Lufthansa Forced a Soloist To Carry Her 243-Year-Old Violin ‘Bare’ On a Flight

A German violin soloist and professor at HMT ‘Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’ in Leipzig says she was left with tears rolling down her cheeks when Lufthansa’s check-in agents at Helsinki Airport, Finland, gave her an ultimatum – check her 243-year-old violin into the cargo hold or travel with it in the cabin but without its case.

Violin soloist meets intransient check-in agents at Helsinki Airport

Carolin Widmann was traveling from Helsinki to Leipzig with a connection in Frankfurt last Thursday when she was refused permission to take her violin case into the cabin of the Lufthansa plane.

The soloist had been in high spirits after what she described as a “stunning” concert with the Tapiola Sinfonietta in Espoo, Finland, but her experience with Lufthansa’s outsourced check-in agents at Helsinki Vantaa Airport certainly changed her mood.

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A post shared by Carolin Widmann (@carolinwidmannviolin)

Carolin says she travels to around 60 international concerts a year, and every time she does so, she has been able to take her 1782 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin into the passenger cabin as hand luggage with her.

On this occasion, however, the check-in agent told Carolin her that the instrument exceeded the permitted dimensions for hand luggage.

Carolin was given three options:

• Check the case and violin into the cargo hold and risk it being irreparably damaged.
• Buy an extra seat for the violin.
• Or take the violin out of its case and travel with it ‘naked’ on the plane.

Carolin was understandably unprepared to check the instrument into the hold, so she tried to book an additional seat for the flight from Helsinki to Finland.

But the connecting flight from Frankfurt to Leipzig was fully booked, and no spare seats could be reserved on this leg.

Her thought process was that once in Frankfurt, she wouldn’t have any issues taking her instrument into the cabin on her connecting flight, so she only had to book the additional seat for the first leg of her journey.

Lufthansa’s ticketing system, however, didn’t allow this, so she was issued an ultimatum.

Forced to do the unthinkable – travel without the violin’s case

In a lengthy post on Instagram, Carolin says that faced with no mercy from the check-in staff, she was “forced to do the unthinkable”: check in the empty violin case into the cargo hold and travel with the ‘bare’ violin in the cabin.

Carolin wrote: “Tears rolling down my cheeks because I felt so protective of my instrument and was so shocked at the completely stubborn and non-sensical insistence on ‘rules’ that seem to be brutally implemented at Helsinki airport only, I took my precious and beloved violin out of its case, wrapped it into my sweater, carried it with me through security and boarded the plane.”

Lufthansa staff on board were supportive of Carolin’s plight

It turns out that once on board the plane to Frankfurt, the Lufthansa cabin crew were “very supportive” and went out of their way to help Carolin because they understood the difficult situation she had been put in.

Carolin admits that this isn’t the first time she has faced difficulty at airport check-in counters and that a fair amount of negotiation is sometimes required to allow her to travel with her instrument in the cabin.

“We are happy to follow the rules,” Carolin says. “But these rules urgently need to be updated, amended and applied globally – so that we can travel with our valuable instruments for our profession without fear of harassment or of being denied boarding.”

What is Lufthansa’s official policy for musical instruments?

Carolin flies with Lufthansa so much that she is considered a ‘Senator’ frequent flyer, but that status didn’t help when it came to Lufthansa’s cabin baggage rules.

But what exactly are those rules?

Lufthansa says that passengers can take musical instruments into the cabin free of charge as their main piece of hand luggage, so long as the dimensions of the instrument and case do not exceed 55 x 40 x 23 cm and/or exceed 8 kg.

If the instrument does exceed these parameters, then passengers are required to book an additional seat at the same time they book their own seat. The instrument then sits on the floor in front of the seat or is strapped into the spare seat.

Carolin’s case measured 80 x 27 x 16 cm, so while she quite rightly points out that the total volume would be much smaller than Lufthansa’s standard cabin size dimensions, this fails to take into account why Lufthansa has set these parameters.

Airlines are looking to squeeze as many cases into the overhead bins as possible, and to do so, cases must conform to standard measurements for optimal use of the space available.

Because Carolin’s case is longer than the standard case, it would have to be placed into the overhead bin sideways, taking up the space of two standard cases.

How could the check-in agents have handled this better?

While technically correct with their interpretation of the rules, a little empathy in this situation could have gone a long way. One solution that happens quite often is, at the very least, to let the passenger travel with the case through the airport and, if necessary, gate check the case just before boarding.

That, however, only happens after gate agents have spoken to the crew about whether they are happy to accommodate the oversized case on board… which in the vast majority of cases happens without a problem.

Bottom line

German violin soloist Carolin Widmann is calling on airlines to amend their carry-on luggage policies to make it easier for musicians to travel with their precious instruments in the cabin.

What do you think? Should Lufthansa’s contracted check-in agents in Helsinki have been more lenient in this case?