[TPIN] airlines + trumpet: travel difficulties

[dave mcgranahan]

I've taken my horn as carry-on baggage to Mexico, New
Zealand, and the UK in the last six months (albeit
before the most recent flap), and never had any
trouble - not even a second look from the security
people.  It's worth noting that despite all of the
anti-Bush political stuff in the article excerpted
below, this was NOT a US flag carrier, and the cops
were French.

Dave

--- Peter Sokolowski <peter.sokolowski at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
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