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Pre 9/11, I always took my Ovation shallow body in a soft case on
board all flights, across
the great pond or puddle jumping. I never seemed to have difficulty
getting it in an overhead
compartment either. Never had to sweet talk the stewardess (well, not to
get the guitar onboard
anyway...) or ask to get on the flight early. Haven't flown with it since
9/11
Only one snafu, when flying from Germany to Seattle, via DC to New
York. The DC to JFK jump
was in a small propeller plane. As we were walking across the tarmac to
board the plane, one of
the ground crew stopped me and said, "there's no room for anything like
that on board." I just
looked at him and confidently said "I do it all the time." When I got on
board, I found out that
he was totally correct, the overhead bins were large enough to fit your
sack lunch and not much
more. On one side of the aisle, there were two seats and on the other
side, one. I chose one of
the single seats, put my guitar between me and the window, covered myself
with a blanket and
spread out a large magazine to cover the fact that there was a guitar head
getting comfy with my
armpit. To this day I'll never know if they were aware of it and just let
it pass...
That being said, being nice and friendly with people goes a long way.
When in Rome at the
airport heading back to the US, the nice man at the airline counter asked
me where I would like to
sit. Without hesitating I asked for a seat next to a beautiful young
woman, preferably Italian.
"Okay sir, we'll see what we can do for you... (checking his computer
screen) hmm... 1976... is
that too young for you sir? "No" I replied. "Well I'm sorry to say that
the only remaining
available seat next to a beautiful young woman is in business class, will
that be okay for you
sir?" Instant upgrade.
Except that she wasn't Italian...
Stephen
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