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This Viral Video is Further Proof of What Guitarists Have Been Saying About Airline Luggage Handling for Years

There’s no word yet on who the guitars belonged to.

By Stephen Andrew Galiher

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There’s a video going viral that’s (justifiably) enraging musicians. The footage captured by TikTok user Nick Ruiz shows an airport luggage handler tossing guitar cases with complete disrespect for the instruments inside. It may be surprising to see, but it’s something that musicians have said about airlines for years.

Ruiz noted that while this happened at LAX, he was not aware of who the cases belonged to. At this time, it’s unclear if the handler was an employee of a specific airline. You can view the clip below.

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It’s disappointing to see such carelessness with any baggage, let alone a fragile musical instrument. Honestly, this kind of thing has probably been happening for as long as musicians have been flying on commercial planes. Thankfully, the social media era has created more accountability for such actions.

Tracing back to an early instance of a musician calling out an airline over a damaged instrument, we find singer-songwriter Dave Carroll. He took his conflict with United Airlines online in 2009, after his “$3,500 Taylor 710 guitar” was damaged while flying the previous year. In response to their lack of help, he wrote a song called “United Breaks Guitars“.

In a 2016 conversation with Medium, Carroll stated that United did not make things right. Until, he says, his protest songs went viral. “At no point along the way did they actually handle or resolve the situation satisfactorily,” he added.

This Video makes a strong argument for musicians paying to have their guitar in a seat rather than being checked.

More recently, guitarists Emily Wolfe and Madi Diaz have taken to social media to call out airlines for similar behavior. In 2024, Diaz shared a series of posts on X/Twitter—as reported by Guitar.com—calling out Delta Airlines. She had a 20-year-old Martin acoustic guitar that was damaged at some point during her travels,

“Truly devastated by the damage done by Delta to my 20-year-old Martin guitar,” the Nashville-based musician wrote in one post. “So many memories just gone. Absolutely beyond devastated. Delta needs to be held responsible.”

In August 2025, Wolfe lambasted Southwest Airlines after discovering her Epiphone guitar had its headstock “completely broken off” in transit. Eventually, Wolfe shared that the airline had “agreed to cover the damages.” She added, “Hopefully this contributes to airlines taking better care of gear across the board.”

Hopefully, airlines will see the backlash this has sparked and make changes to avoid such indecency. Or at the very least, minimize it. But we probably shouldn’t hold our breath.

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