An outraged musician says American Airlines booted her from a flight with her $30,000 cello after she bought a ticket for it with no…
An outraged musician says American Airlines booted her from a flight with her $30,000 cello after she bought a ticket for it with no strings attached.
Jingjing Hu, a DePaul University School of Music student, was able to fly from Chicago to Miami to perform in a music festival with no problem, but minutes before the doors closed on her return flight last week, she was told she needed to get off, NBC5 reported.
“This aircraft is too small to hold your cello,” she recalled an American Airlines employee telling her about the Boeing 737.
In a Facebook post shared over 2,000 times, Hu’s husband, Jay Tang, wrote that he bought the tickets over the phone, told a rep one seat was for the cello and was told it was “absolutely allowed.”
No one at check-in told his wife she couldn’t bring the instrument, he said — nor did they say anything when she pre-boarded or when she initially sat down, with a flight attendant even giving her a safety belt extender at first.
But after securing the pricey instrument, it seems the flight crew changed their minds.
A friend of Hu’s who was allowed to stay on the flight noted that after Hu got off the plane with her instrument, two people headed for the seats she had occupied, the couple said.
“Clearly AA is just playing around with customers,” Tang wrote on Facebook. “They just kick off passengers when they oversell their tickets using FAA regulations as an excuse.”
But passengers are permitted to carry an oversize instrument in the flight cabin if it is in a case and they buy an extra seat, according to federal regulations.
American Airlines’ policy requires instruments to weigh less than 165 pounds, but Hu says hers weighs less than 10.
“I don’t think we did anything wrong here and I think the way they handled it was humiliating,” Tang said.
His wife was rebooked on a flight that left Miami the next day.
In a statement, American Airlines said there was a “miscommunication” about whether the cello met the requirements to fit aboard the aircraft.
“We apologize for the misunderstanding and customer relations will be reaching out to her,” the statement read.
Hu said she hopes she’ll get a sincere apology from the airline.
“You had so many chances to tell me ‘you cannot board,’” she said. “You never told me until I sat down.”
