Airlines still out of tune with musicians, hit jarring note with instruments in flight

This week, Anoushka Shankar did what she’s done for most of her life, reached for her sitar to tune it before a performance after flying London to Delhi. What she didn’t expect was to sound out of tune.

“I picked it up to play and that’s when I realised (there was a crack)… this was my first time flying Air India in a long time. The country this music belongs to, and this is the first time anything like this has happened to my instrument in 15 or 17 years. How have you done this? I have special cases, you guys charge a handling fee and yet you’ve done this?”Her post ricocheted across timelines. Air India apologised, offered to compensate for repairs and promised a policy review.

Shankar shared a video of her sitar undergoing delicate repair by Ajay Rikhiram. “Hopefully they will follow through… it’s not enough if it’s just me who gets the support.”For most musicians — a touring indie artist or a classical stalwart — none of this feels new. India, home to some of the most intricate handmade instruments, still struggles to get them safely from one airport to another.In Kochi last month, Parvinder Singh watched his handpan case thud down the luggage belt.

“They had promised it would come by hand,” he says. He had begged IndiGo not to take it at the gate and even paid Rs 1,000 for ‘out of cargo’ handling — meant for delicate items carried by hand. “I always take my handpans in the cabin. This time I trusted them when they said I’d get it back safely.” He didn’t. Each handpan is handmade, tuned to scale, and takes months to build.

Only after his social media posts went viral did IndiGo offer Rs 50,000 but he wanted a written assurance.

“I lost shows in peak season. Can’t risk this again.”Sarod player Arnab Bhattacharya has learned the same lesson. In June, travelling Kolkata to Tel Aviv on Akasa Air, he picked up his hard-fibre case — plastered with ‘fragile’ stickers — and instantly knew something was wrong. “The case was damaged and the sarod had a clear crack,” he says. At Abu Dhabi, staff insisted there was “no damage” and pointed to the LTA — the Limited Release tag passengers sign — which absolves airlines of responsibility.

“I didn’t know it means the airline won’t take responsibility even if they break your instrument.” Only after a TOI report did the airline call back, offering compensation if he deleted his post. “I denied but they eventually compensated.”Sometimes the negotiation borders on the surreal. “Indigo once offered me a Shoppers Stop voucher for a broken instrument,” he says. Even new rules haven’t helped. In November, Air India Express charged him Rs 1,500 as “musical instrument fee”.

“If they say they’ll carry it by hand, then carry it by hand,” he says, pointing to another violation musicians rarely discuss: “Instrument boxes opened without permission.

”On paper, airlines list clear rules. In practice, what counts as ‘small’, ‘bulky’ or ‘oversized’ changes from airline to airline.In 2019 sitarist Shubhendra Rao watched a carefully packed sitar emerge damaged from an Air India flight. “It wasn’t broken when I checked in but Air India’s stance was if the case was intact, the damage could not have happened.”His petition drew over 85,000 signatures from Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and Shujaat Husain Khan to Anoushka Shankar. He met the secretary of Civil Aviation in February 2020, but months later the ministry wrote back saying they had found “no evidence”.Airlines still make him sign LTA forms when he travels and they lean on the Montreal/Warsaw Convention, which caps baggage liability at around Rs 1.2 lakh, which he says is “meaningless for instruments worth several lakhs.”Airline officials say the real trouble begins at the check-in counter where enforcement varies. “If a musical instrument generally qualifies as cabin baggage but suddenly one staffer insists it has to be checked in, there’s very little a passenger can do to guarantee its safety,” says one official.Booking an extra seat — “cabin-seat baggage” — isn’t permitted in India for bulky instruments. Even when allowed, it must be strapped in, pre-booked, prepaid, weigh under 75 kg, block no signage or aisle, and comply with seat-safety rules.A cargo-handling official says the usual culprits are belt impacts, unloading shocks, pressure changes and rough transfers. Better packing — rigid cases, loosened strings, padded interiors, detachable parts wrapped separately — helps, but it’s still a gamble. And standard insurance excludes instruments entirely.Handling may be better than the ’90s, Rao says, but one question hangs in the air. “If something still goes wrong despite all the forms and fees, who answers for it?”His appeal to regulators is basic. “If a suitcase breaks, they replace it. Why is an instrument different?...an instrument isn’t just our bread and butter. It’s an artiste’s lifeline.”