The only time I saw my father cry was when he found out my sister had checked his guitar on some flight and it had been damaged beyond repair... so I understand the fear of checking anything valuable or fragile. However, you aren't paying extra because you are musicians, you are paying extra to protect something extra and precious, and that is only fair. What was allowed in the past wasn't normal for today's climes, whereas what is going on now, really is, much as I miss the good old days of being able to get away with almost anything! Also, anything that doesn't fit inside a seat belt properly MUST be stored overhead or under seat, or the plane can't leave the terminal, so it wasn't ridiculous to store that violin from the point of view of the flight crew... but meanwhile, it might have seemed perfectly reasonable to the sales people that to carry something extra, you'd need an extra seat. The ticket BUYER should have been savvy enough to say Why, since it can't sit down but will have to be stowed? - if she had travelled by plane a lot, she'd know that... so it still smacks of urban legend to me, too.