No doubt today's news is going to have an impact on travel, especially abroad.

If possible, I would like to know anyone's personal experience with the security screenings, particularly about the carry-on situation. Not traveling anywhere, yet, but am in the planning stages.

Hoping on safe travel for all...

Angela G

I just took my daughter to the airport. Screening lines are an hour or more. They are not letting any liquids on board and are even confiscating some lipsticks. She was able to get a chapstick through but I've heard they have been taken as well. She did not have problems taking her instrument on board with United. In the UK they are not allowing any carry-ons at all. I would plan to get to the airport earlier than usual since the radio reported missed flights due to the long screening lines. I haven't heard anything about international travel outside of reports from the UK.

Phoenix
Just to clarify. What instrument does your daughter play? You are saying that United let her take this instrument onboard as hand/cabin baggage yesterday?

I don't know whether your daughter will be flying OUT of Britain anytime soon, but unless the situation changes she will NOT be able to carry her instrument case on board as hand luggage on a flight originating from a British airport. Might be something for her to consider if this is the case.

As it happens I am very surprised indeed that the American authorities let her take the case on a flight to London, particularly with United which was apparently one of the specific American airlines targeted. From what I have heard from other sources, ALL hand baggage was confiscated from passengers on certain other USA to Britain flights apart from specific items like passport, travel docs, wallet etc.

It seems that some orchestras will be faced with problems if they have plans to go through British airports in next week or so at least - as no exception will be made for musical instruments. I guess everything will have to be crated in the hold unless chartering a plane just for orchestra is a way around the problem? See Fraught musicians in GB and Fretting Finnish musicians

I wonder what the Minnesota Orchestra are going to do on their British section of tour? Any comments Sam?

With a few exceptions, members of the Minnesota Orchestra do not travel with our instruments on tour. Our stage crew travels with dozens of specially made instrument trunks that fly on a separate cargo plane with the crew, or are driven between stops. There are a few members of the orchestra who hand-carry their instruments so as to have more immediate access to them, but I doubt that will be a big problem for us in the UK. The odds that all carry-ons will still be banned when we travel to the UK on August 24 are fairly slim, according to news reports, and also, our flight into London is on a small, British Midlands flight that actually disallows all checked baggage, so I doubt there will be a problem. Finally, our flight out of the UK to Helsinki on the 26th is a charter, so we'll luck out again.

To be honest, the situation that may be of greater concern to us at the moment is the possibility of a CHAOS strike by Northwest Airlines flight attendants beginning next Tuesday. Our transatlantic flights are on Northwest, and Minneapolis is a fortress hub for the airline, which controls more than 85% of all flights in and out of MSP, so our options for alternate travel would be extremely limited. A judge in New York has been asked to rule on the legality of such a strike, and in the wake of yesterday's arrests, the union is reportedly considering an extension of their deadline, but it's still a major issue, further complicated by the fact that, as a union orchestra, we try to avoid crossing picket lines whenever possible...

Just to clarify, my daughter plays trombone but was boarding a US flight NOT a flight from or to the UK. She was able to fly with her instrument on board for this US flight. As I said, UK flights are not allowing carry-ons at all - not even books!!

quote:

Originally posted by Phoenix:
UK flights are not allowing carry-ons at all - not even books!!

This is another reason I'm not terribly worried about our upcoming tour. The flying public will, of course, tolerate inconveniences (even staggering ones like this) in the immediate wake of an incident such as the London arrests. But business travelers aren't about to start checking their laptops on international flights as a regular occurrence, nor are passengers in general going to continue to tolerate a complete ban on books, MP3 players, etc. on long, international flights. I can't imagine that the UK government will expect them to put up with this for long. It sounds very much as if Scotland Yard and MI5 want to make sure that they've well and truly rounded up everyone involved in this particular plot, and that they will then ease off the restrictions.

In other news concerning what I said in my first post, the Northwest flight attendants just announced that they're extending their strike deadline to August 25, putting us in the clear for our flight to Europe on the 20th. We could still be delayed on our return flight, but obviously, that's not as big a concern.

Here's the latest: the Orchestra of St. Luke's has canceled its scheduled concerts in London and Edinburgh this week as a direct result of the UK flight restrictions.

More info on homepage of myauditions. The situation is featured as today's top story.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TRAVEL/09/21/britain.airports.ap/index.html

It looks like there is relief in sight for musicians using British airports. I hope the information in this article is true!