Flying With a Guitar (Again)

Trust, risk, and a 45‑minute Ryanair flight.

In 2016, flying through Istanbul, I watched my SKB case come off the belt looking like it had been dropped from the hold of the plane before we actually landed. The plastic was cracked, the frame twisted, and it had clearly hit the tarmac hard. My signature Fender inside, though - not a mark on it. Perfect neck, perfect setup, still in tune. The case had taken the hit so the guitar didn’t have to.

That moment changed how I travelled. From then until now, I’ve always bought the guitar its own seat. That’s not indulgence; it’s insurance. A guitar is a strange companion; part tool, part voice, part diary; and once you’ve seen a case come back looking like it’s been through a small war, you don’t take chances.

But this weekend I was flying Ryanair for a 45‑minute hop, and the economics were absurd: £247.93 for a seat, £60 in the hold. And Éala and I, if I’m honest, haven’t fully bonded yet. I like her, I enjoy playing her, but we’re not in that deep, instinctive place where every mark would feel like a mark on me. So I made a decision I haven’t made in nearly a decade: I put a guitar in the hold again.

I didn’t take chances with the packing. Éala went foam‑wrapped into the SKB case, snug and secure. The case went into a cardboard frame to stop the neck drifting, and that went into an even bigger cardboard box padded with what felt like acres of bubble wrap. “Fragile - Instrument” stickers everywhere. The flight number taped to the outside like a hospital wristband.

There’s a particular feeling that comes with handing a guitar over at check‑in. You’ve loosened the strings, padded the headstock, checked the latches twice, and now you’re giving it to someone who doesn’t know what it means to you. You watch it disappear down the belt and think, Right… see you on the other side.

I should say this: the airport staff and airline crew were excellent throughout. Helpful, patient, and careful. The tension was all mine; the product of memory, imagination, and the strange way musicians project meaning onto wooden boxes with strings.

It’s a small act of trust, or maybe a small act of denial. Either way, it’s a moment.

Severe weather across Europe delayed the plane arriving at East Midlands. I tracked the package on its wireless tag as it moved through the airport; or didn’t. At one point a message popped up: “We can’t guarantee your baggage is in this location.” The usual get‑out clause, but it doesn’t help the nerves. Eventually the plane arrived. I boarded. I watched anxiously for the little “train” of luggage approaching the aircraft, scanning for the big cardboard box with the red‑and‑white FRAGILE tape nursing its seams.

The Journey Home

Dublin: the journey from Kalamazoo (the nickname for the most extreme gates of Terminal 1), and through passport control, is interminable. Then, after baggage reclaim, there’s that strange, suspended moment where you’re reunited with the carton but not yet with the guitar. You lift it off the belt, feel the weight, check the corners and the ends. Everything looks fine, but you don’t really know. Not yet.

Then it’s a glide through customs; after Brexit they wanted to charge me import duty every time I landed home with a guitar from the UK — and then, on to the shuttle bus to the Red Car Park. Anyone who knows Dublin Airport knows that the bus circles the terminals twice and hits every sleeping policeman the airport authority can spare. The carton was too big to stand upright between my knees, so it sat in the luggage rack among an anarchic pile of anonymous suitcases. Every bump made me wince and silently bless the driver.

Off the bus, across the car‑park desert with the pedalboard on my back and the guitar‑box strap in my hand. The strap snapped. My heart leapt. My foot caught the carton before it hit the tarmac. A small mercy.

Finally, the car. A short drive home by a very angry sea, the wind coming straight from Brittany. The guitar lay quietly in the back like a passenger who doesn’t speak.

At home, the wind was fierce enough to make lifting the carton from the car a challenge. Guiding it through the garden gate and into the house felt like a final test. By the time I got inside it was dark, late, and I was emotionally exhausted from what should have been a simple commuter journey.

I laid Éala, still boxed, gently on the leather couch and decided to let her temperature catch up overnight.

This is such a small thing in the grand scheme of life, but for a musician it’s a very particular kind of suspense, the kind you feel in your chest more than your head.

The Morning After

The next morning the blinds were open, the sea was calm, the wind gone. The sun was rising, its warm light spilling through the long windows. I made an espresso and began dismantling the packaging.

The outer box was untouched. No dents. No punctures. Customs hadn’t opened it. The humidity and temperature gauge inside the case showed everything was within limits.

The black fabric cover slipped off the SKB case. I moved the packaging aside. Still reclining on the sofa, I flicked open the TSA locks.

For a split second my stomach dropped, Éala looked like a patient in a battlefield hospital ward. Then I remembered: I’d wrapped her in a large sheet of fine foam to stop any movement. I eased her up, the foam fell away, and a single crepuscular ray from the window struck the fiddle‑back maple. She gleamed.

I checked every part of her. Perfect. Tuned her up. Leaned into a tune. She sounded exactly like herself.

Heart rate returning to normal, I played a couple more tunes before returning to my espresso and breakfast.

A Quiet Epilogue — and March on the Horizon

Sitting there with Éala safe on my knee, the sea calm again and the morning light warming the room, I realised how much of this little drama had lived entirely in my chest. Ninety percent imagination, ten percent risk, and a lifetime of knowing what a guitar means to a musician. She survived the journey without a mark, but the tension of it; that stays in the body a while.

And the story isn’t quite finished. In March I’ll be flying through Istanbul again - twice, in fact. The same airport where my SKB case once came back looking like it had been dropped from the sky. I have the baggage allowance to put Éala in the hold, but the decision isn’t automatic. It never is, once you’ve lived both sides of the equation: the disaster narrowly avoided, and the quiet relief of a guitar emerging unscathed.

Maybe this weekend was a rehearsal. Maybe it was a reminder that most journeys end without incident. Or maybe it was just a small, necessary test of trust before the bigger crossing in March.

Either way, La Madeline, my baby dreadnought, is waiting at the far end of the journey, and that big cardboard box from the EMA–DUB hop is folded neatly in a box‑room corner. I still haven’t decided which is the wiser tune.