Another priceless instrument broken by airline

Andrew Kay is organizing this fundraiser.

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Hi, My name is Andrew Kay and I'm a musician from Toronto, Canada. My brother Jonathan Kay is also a world-class multi-instrumentalist musician. We have both spent over a decade living in India studying and performing traditional Indian Classical music, as well as travelling and performing across the globe. Fortunately, in all the years of travel, we haven't had to face much major damage to our instruments, until now.

Jonathan just travelled from Toronto to London on his way to India for a two-month work trip. Carrying his very rare, almost one-of-a-kind, hand-mand customised instrument called the Esraj, he was forced to gate-check the instrument and upon his arrival in London, there was no sign of the instrument but after spending hours inquiring about where his instrument was, it wasn't even in their system. After spending hours each day inquiring about the whereabouts of his instrument and if it would be sent to him, they confirmed they had found the instrument and would courier it to him in London, which was almost a week after his initial travel. When he arrived to catch his flight to India, he picked up his instrument and found it had been broken during the shipment. The resonating gourd at the top is completely broken off, and there is a severe crack in the main body, despite being well-packed in a fiberglass case! The instrument is not beyond repairable, and Jonathan will be able to visit the original maker in the countryside of West Bengal to get it repaired, however, it will never be the same, and who knows if it will incur more damage the next time he flies.

This fundraiser is to help Jonathan have the funds to repair this instrument, and get a more robust travel case made that offers more protection. It will also allow him to have enough to invest in getting a secondary instrument made and to purchase a secondary seat on the flight so that he doesn't have to risk checking it or losing it in the baggage check world.

You can only imagine the stress and strife, not to mention the hours of sitting on hold and working through the labyrinth of customer service to get a solution, which in the end only resulted in a broken instrument.

It isn't right or fair that this continues to happen to world-class musicians travelling the world and forced to not only check their priceless instruments, only to have them smashed and broken, and then have almost zero accountability from the part of the airlines.

These instruments are not only an integral part of the livelihood of musicians, but the number of hours that go into the building, customizing, practicing, and performance are immeasurable. No doubt would go well into the thousands of hours depending on the length of life of the instrument.

When will airlines accept that their treatment of musicians and their instruments is totally unacceptable and when will society and other travellers stand up to help musicians with this very unique problem we are continually facing when travelling by air?

So I hope that this fundraiser will not only help raise some funds to help out Jonathan but also gain some more traction on social media and amplify the call for reform and changes to the way airlines allow musicians to travel with their instruments and the ways that they help to protect them and prevent this unnecessary and cruel damage to happen in the first place.