Breaking

A friend of mine, Marcus, is flying off with his guitar on tow. He wished to know what airlines are like these days pertaining to instrument handling; do they allow a carry-on or observe a strict check-in affair. Two days later, I came across this book (was on sale) which documented Dave Carroll's plight with a very uncaring United Airlines who broke his Taylor guitar & showed crass treatment pursuant to his appeals. Dave, being a musician, took matters to another plane (forgive the pun) & retaliated through his music. He did a music video highlighting his plight with the intention to create awareness which was the underlying concern throughout the encounter (hey, airlines give a rat's ass about your fragile property, they are just not interested). 

The video, as depicted above, was a tongue-in-check approach in dealing with the matter but at more than 10mil views, it managed to hurt UA in the most unexpected (& downright deserving) manner; it brought share prices down by 10% which translated to be a whopping $180mil in value- take that!

The flip side of this very costly affair is that UA made amends, they are still using the video for corporate training (customer service related, of course), Dave got the break (no pun intended here, for sure) he wanted for his music & Taylor guitars were more than happy to be part of the reconciliation process. Take aways from it all: 1) Don't mess with angry musicians whose gear you maltreated- they are more than capable in bringing you down. 2) Address the situation- if you see matters off without addressing the real issue in hand, it's gonna be costlier than you think 3) The human element always wins it- in case you missed it, things ended on good terms because people chose to let the human element take over. The damage had been done, moving on with positivity and the over-arching need for improvements & precautions are signs of human considerations- plenty of humans involved in this case, yes?