Aviation: Hand-luggage Restrictions

Lord Colwyn Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the first point that my noble friend made was about damage to instruments. The key point here is that the musical instrument is absolutely vital to a musician. Musicians and their instruments are as one and, if they lose their instrument or it is damaged, their ability to perform at the highest level is severely reduced. My department is well aware of the issue, but if airlines want to acquire a bad reputation for looking after musicians, they do so at their own risk.

[Lord Colwyn]

My Lords, I should declare an interest as a member of the Musicians’ Union and as a very part-time musician. Does my noble friend agree that musicians need airlines to be consistent in understanding the problems of travelling with musical instruments? I know that my noble friend has had a meeting with the Musicians’ Union but can he explain why musicians from other countries do not seem to experience similar problems and why professional musicians are treated less favourably than sports enthusiasts?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble Lord suggested that airlines in other countries do not have this problem, but they do. One difficulty for musicians is that they can fly out from, say, Heathrow with one airline which accepts their instrument but when they try to fly back with the same airline on a return ticket they find that they cannot get back. One solution might be to regulate but the difficulty there is that we will go for the lowest common denominator and that might discourage the industry from coming up with an innovative solution. During my meeting with members of the Musicians’ Union, I urged them to take the opportunity to talk to airline and airport operators to try to come up with a solution to the problem or at least to improve the situation.