United Airlines breaks $15,000 of camera gear on flight

A fashion photographer had all of his camera equipment broken when he flew with United Airlines recently. According to the photographer, the airline required him to check his camera bag into the luggage hold. The estimated loss is around $15,000.

Anvar Karimov was flying from Los Angeles to Chicago for a shoot when the incident happened. When he arrived at his destination, he was distraught to discover that his valuable camera equipment had been opened, dropped, and destroyed.

Karimov explained in a Reddit post that he was made to check in the Pelican case containing his gear, because there wasn’t enough overhead bin space on board to take it on as carry on. It was too big to fit under the seat.

Now, Karimov is fighting with the airline to get compensation as his equipment wasn’t insured separately. According to Petapixel, United Airlines has so far offered him a voucher for a paltry $100.

Karimov is now in the unenviable position of having no camera equipment to shoot more jobs that he has lined up over the coming months, while he fights with the airline to get reasonable compensation.

“I’ve had cameras and lenses that took damage but never in my life have I seen internal hardware break,” he told Petapixel. “They were dropped. This thing was 100% dropped from a super high position.”

He may well be correct about that. Oh the stories I could tell about working as a touring musician regarding instruments and airlines. I have witnessed baggage handlers dropping a 2 metre high double bass in a flight case from the top of the conveyor belt as they loaded it onto a jet, that was after the baggage truck already ran it over knocking it to the ground. On another trip, the same instrument was ‘lost’ outside on the tarmac in Amsterdam in pouring rain for three days.

Another musician I know was asked to gate-check (similar to Karimov) his extremely expensive violin because the case was too large and the overhead bins were full. He refused, stood his ground, and ended up with his violin on his lap without a case for the duration of the flight.

Sports and camera equipment are not treated much better by baggage handlers. In this video you can see how the baggage guys are throwing bags of golf clubs off the plane. Imagine if those were camera cases – you can easily understand how things can get broken. Partiularly if TSA don’t close the case or repack properly after their inspections (this also happens).

United Airlines has long had a terrible reputation with musicians for mistreating instruments. One musician even resorted to writing a song about how the airline broke his guitar in order to get compensation. Until the song went viral, he was being firmly ignored. So I guess Karimov could try something similar if his requests continue to fall upon deaf ears.

If you’re ever in this situation, remember that there are options. You do not have to check your camera equipment. Here are a few points that may help:

• Insure all of your gear, this is a non-negotiable
• I would try to avoid flying with all of your equipment at any one time if possible, look into renting gear at your destination if necessary
• If you intend to bring your gear as a carry-on, use a camera bag or backpack that fits the dimensions. Do not use a hard shell case that looks like a flight case. This will automatically get singled out for being checked. Backpacks are much easier to get onboard.
• Use the lithium-ion battery argument. These types of batteries are not allowed in the hold due to fire risk. You can use this as a strong point against checking your camera equipment
• If you are forced to check your gear, take out a camera body and lens or two (or three or four) and put them loose in your pockets, hands, carry-on bag, wherever you can. It’s not ideal, but in a pinch, you will probably take better care of them than they’d fare under the plane.
• Never put a fragile sticker on anything. It seems to just single out your equipment for getting mishandled.
• If nothing else, you can refuse to fly. If you have checked-in bags already, the airline will be forced to offload them before they can leave. This will delay the flight considerably while they search for your bag and offload it. Airlines try to avoid this, use it as another bargaining chip.
• You can try this rather unorthodox trick of packing a gun in with your equipment (not sure how I feel about this honestly!)

While I really feel for Karimov and understand that he was put in a horrible position, the truth is that flying with expensive gear is never a pleasant experience. I hope he manages to get fair compensation for his equipment, and when he replaces his gear he takes out insurance.

Next time travel by car.

[via petapixel]