Hi Marty,

Get on the phone and call Delta. You should be able to get your seating assignment well ahead of the flight, unless it's one of those deals where you're told that you'll get your seat assignment at the gate on the day of your flight. But you won't know unless you call and ask first. Good luck,

And the airline broke the TSA regs. Bags are not supposed to fly without the passenger on board.

Also, Delta, along with other airlines I'm sure, can and will take your gate-checked bags and toss them in the mix with checked luggage at your destination. Leaving you to watch that lightly padded camera bag come sliding down the luggage carousel, maybe soaking wet if it is raining.

Duane

I think it is one of those deals with the seating determined the day of. However the Delta rep said that he could set my seating while I am on the phone but that will have no bearing on wether the airline will let me bring the camera on board. I may actually go to the airport and ask to speak to someone at the Delta terminal and discuss this in person.

Thanks!

I suggest that you ship it. Insure it and ship it. On the way back you can carry it.

Exactly. I pointed that out to the staff at the gate and the cabin crew. They didn't care.

One thing to make a small note of is if you get bumbed to bussiness class with air miles and on a large aircraft and placed on the 2nd floor, the over head bins are non existant. Continintal would not let me take my small pellican hard case upstairs and said they would stash it somewhere else on the plane for me, they put it a few rows away from the stairs but not before dropping it. I would have prefered my camera to be somewhere I could have kept an eye on it.

Well I am in Orlando now with my XLh1 in tow. I was barely able to fit it on the Embraer rj145 plane. As Chris suggested I had to stow it under my seat. The overhead would barely fit an HV10!

Anyway I made it but not without some minor problems.....the handles for my Bogen Mark II tripod head mysteriously disappeared from one of my luggage bags.

What the......????? I mean....why would someone swipe the handles? I had the tripod and head shipped seperate but didn't want to inlcude the handles as I was afraid they would get lost or broken. Stupid me....I should have taken my chances with the contracted freight carrier instead!

Peace!