Air Canada denies seat to cellist’s cello even though he bought ticket

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There will be no cello serenades for Air Canada by U.K-based cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason any time soon.

He and his piano-playing sister, Isata, were on their way to perform to a packed house at Toronto’s Koerner Hall on Dec. 11, when Kanneh-Mason was told his cello could not come  on the trip, even though he had purchased a seat for it.

Kanneh-Mason’s cello is more than 300 years old, built around 1700 by famous Venetian luthier, Matteo Goffriller. The instrument has an estimated worth of more than $4.5 million.

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At age 25, Kanneh-Mason is one of the brightest new stars on the classical stage. He came to fame after performing at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in 2018. He was awarded the MBE in 2020.

But that fame didn’t help him in his struggles with Air Canada.

Kanneh-Mason and Isata are on a Winter 2024 tour and were trying to get to Toronto from Cincinnati. Their original flight, on American Airlines, was delayed and then cancelled. So, they bought tickets on a new flight to Toronto on Air Canada — including one for his cello. Kanneh-Mason told the New York Times that “we were given conflicting information by Air Canada throughout the long process, culminating with staff denying our boarding with the cello at the gate.”

According to the Air Canada musical instruments policy, musicians will “receive a 50% discount on any published fare (including the lowest available fare) to accommodate the instrument in the same cabin you are travelling in.” But there’s a caveat.

Air Canada’s accommodation of larger instruments depends on a contacting Air Canada Reservations “as soon as you’ve booked your flight, or at least 48 hours prior to departure.”

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That seems to be the Air Canada catch that caught Kanneh-Masson’s cello. Air Canada told the Times the denial was due to booking late.

Still, Kanneh-Mason frustrated with Air Canada took to his social media accounts to express his anoyance: “We can only dream of a time when all airlines have a standardised, global and carefully considered approach to the carriage of precious instruments that are booked to travel in the cabin.”

Kanneh-Mason said he and his sister were “deeply saddened not to be able to perform for you at Koerner Hall last night.… First we had delays, then a cancellation, and the day concluded by being denied boarding with the cello – despite having a confirmed seat for it – on a new, final flight into Toronto.”

The Koerner Hall concert was called off and rescheduled for June 2024.

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His case is not isolated.

“This is an all too frequent occurrence for traveling cellists and other musicians with instruments that need to go in the cabin,” Kanneh-Mason, said in a statement reported by the New York Times on Tuesday.

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Back in 2017, another classical concert set for Koerner Hall was almost undone by the airline. A chamber orchestra made up of Baltic musicians, The Kremerata Baltica, were en route to Toronto from Newark airport, when one of its four cellos was pulled off the flight due to an order from an Air Canada employee.

The group was travelling with four cellos, each of which had a paid seat. In the end, one of the four cellos had to travel on a separate flight to Toronto, just in time for the Koerner Hall concert. That incident occurred not long after Air Canada overhauled their musical instrument carry-on policy in an attempt to standardize the process.

And Kanneh-Mason faced similar turbulence in September 2023, when his cello was unexpectedly denied boarding on a British Airways flight to London from Bucharest.

He took to social media then, too, writing on X: “Sadly, this is a common problem for me and my fellow professional musicians who travel with instruments that, for many reasons, cannot go in the hold. Why are there these inconsistencies? We need some sort of protocol that we can refer to when we hit these problems, So @British_Airways (and there are other airlines who do this too) shall we sit down and try to work something out, please?”

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