Chuck Cello

[Dave W]

He didn't have a visa

For pity's sake. Air travel for musical instruments is stressful enough, now after buying a seat for her cello, she had to have a visa for it? Ridiculous.

[Pilgrim]

There are always people who were born to late too wear lightning bolts and jackboots, whose reason for living is to enforce every possible regulation.  She found some.

[dadagoboi]

Listing it as a person through a third party booking was asking for trouble.  Why not Usama Bin Cello?  Ditzy twit.

[Dave W]

Listing it as a person through a third party booking was asking for trouble.  Why not Usama Bin Cello?  Ditzy twit.

I don't think so. The article links to the original story, which says that the third party booker told her to contact British Airways directly, that she did and they told her there was no problem with the booking and that there was nothing else she needed to do. Can't blame her for that, especially since she had flown with it successfully before using other airlines.

[dadagoboi]

Quote from BA:

BA said in a statement: "This was a highly unusual incident which arose after the customer booked a seat for her cello as a named passenger. Emphasis mine.

"This is what triggered the requirement for an ESTA from the US government"

Seems pretty straightforward to me but I've had more experience with international flights than most.  I'm sure the next day ticket wasn't booked as Chuck Cello.  It's difficult for me to believe someone's account of the facts who would do something that stupid on a domestic flight let alone an international one bound for the US.

That pre approval visa is required by the US government, not the airline.  They're not supposed to allow a 'passenger' to get on a US bound plane without one.  BA could have let her fly and arranged to transport the cello by freight but they had no responsibility to do so.

[Pilgrim]

When I headed a video production unit at Texas A&M, after a $20,000 camera suffered damage while in a shipping case I instituted a rule that a camera would never be checked - it would buy a seat. If the client wouldn't buy a seat, then we would not travel by air for video shoots. (Full size, 25-pound Ikegami HL55 camera with Sony Betacam back).

I flew to South Texas for one video shoot and they made me put a name on the seat purchase for the camera.  I named it simply "Camera in Case."  The client was a friend of mine, who promptly named it "Cameron Case." He used to ask me after that how Cameron Case was doing.

I can see how a bureaucrat with a penchant for detail could pursue that into paperwork these days.

[Dave W]

Carlo, we're obviously talking past each other here. She was told there was nothing else she needed to do, then when she got to the airport, some officious bastards insisted on following a rule that was meant for actual human passengers.

Yes, there was a rule. It didn't have to be enforced on what was obviously not a human passenger. The type of people who insist on petty shit like this are no different than the bastards at TSA who grope invalid grandmothers in wheelchairs because they can. Same personality types as Dennis Rader, the BTK killer.