Air Travel with a Violin: Part 3

This year when I head to Arkansas for Christmas I will do so with my violin. My grandparents are getting older and I want to make sure that they are able to hear me play without having to travel the better part of 1,110 miles to hear it. However, the thought of traveling with a delicate instrument in these TSA-crazed days has gotten me incredibly paranoid. It became clear that I was actually going to have to PREPARE for this trip rather than just wing it. Thus I give you a three part series on my research and prep for my violin’s first trip by air anywhere in the Continental U.S. (I’m assuming that international travel might be a bit different).

Part 3: Securing adequate protection for my violin

After reading these articles and doing a little research into this whole “linear inches” thing I quickly realized that my violin case was gonna cause some problems. It’s just your standard rectangular violin case. And besides the fact that it’s not what I would call a hard case (though it’s not completely soft and squishy, just doesn’t offer the protection that I think I would want on a commercial airliner) it was significantly larger than the average linear inch limitation for carry-on luggage. I had already decided that the violin was going on board with me and that in order to check it in the baggage compartment they were going to have to pry it out of my cold dead hands. Most of the airlines limit your carry-on luggage to a maximum of 45-46 linear inches (width + height + length). When I did a quick google search of cases, a lot of them that came up that were fiberglass and offered a decent amount of space for various accouterments that I consider “necessary” exceeded that maximum linear inches by one lousy inch.

The one case I did find was compact enough and offered enough protection was the Bobelock Fiberglass Shaped Violin Case.

I did some price shopping and Fisher Violins seemed to have the best online price. What’s more, they have fantastic customer service. I ordered the black with wine velvet interior variety of the case, but for some reason the manufacturer was only shipping black with wine velour interior. The be honest, the only reason I ordered the velvet was because my current case has velvet on the inside. But rather than send me the only case they had in stock they called me to discuss the differences (and took off $10 for my troubles)! And actually now that it’s arrived and I’ve had a chance to look at it, I like the velour a lot better… it seems plusher and (if this is at all real) sturdier than the velvet. I did kind of “trick out” this case since because it’s so small it didn’t come with a lot of the features that I was looking for in a case. I added the hygrometer and the humidifier. And I ordered the padded backpack straps since I knew I’d be carrying it around airports.

Fisher isn’t the only place that you can get the Bobelock case. If you’re a huge Amazon fan, it’s available there too. It’s more expensive on Amazon and doesn’t look like it’s available for Amazon Prime shipping. Also, I’m not sure who the third party vendor is, so I can’t vouch for their customer service like I can for Fisher’s. But some people like the one stop shop of Amazon. If you’re dead set on Amazon, you can click here to buy from Amazon. There also isn’t the option on Amazon to add all the hot features I added. Fisher’s made it easy to add all the upgraded options. With Amazon you’ll have to search for everything individually.