[TPIN] airlines + trumpet: travel difficulties

[Peter Sokolowski]

Folks: I thought that this was interesting enough to post.

NOTE that it comes from a political blog and the source page of this
has some profanity and political opinions mixed in with the story. I
have excised both (unnecessary for us) and the important information
is here. The story isn't from a "news" source and so hasn't been
vetted the way "news" is supposed to be.

The link to the full story is below (at the end of my edited version):


Security people at Charles DeGaulle airport broke the arm of the
internationally famous jazz trumpet player Valery Ponomarev last week...an
American citizen for over 30 years...because he argued with the gate people
at an Air India flight to New York when they demanded that he gate check his
trumpet rather than bring it onto the plane. A trumpet that:

A-Fits with no problem whatsoever in the overheads.

and

B-Had been properly tagged as carry-on baggage before he got to the gate.

So Valery... 63 years old, maybe 5' 5" tall, 140 lbs...[complained]
at the gate when some functionary decided to pull rank on him. They
called security and four [uniformed men] took him someplace where
there were no witnesses, tried to forcibly take his trumpet away and
when he would not let go of it with his right hand, pulled his left
arm behind his back and broke it.

Valery did not try to fight these people. As he related today (I wish
I could reproduce his great Russan accent) "I grew up in Soviet Union
under Stalin and Khruschev. I know enough not to try to hit a cop. Let
alone four of them. [...] I am not THAT stupid."

And indeed he is not.

Here is a man who grew up in Russia when playing "jazz" was almost an
act of open rebellion and got so good that Art Blakey hired him to
join the Jazz Messengers in the late '60s.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/16/72849/4595