Spirit Airlines is actively enforcing a policy that is in violation of international law, causes destruction to its passenger’s property, and strong arms defenseless passengers into signing away their rights. Last week my guitar—now broken—paid the price for Spirit Airline’s dubious luggage policy.

There is no sin in running a budget airline. I love budget airlines. What’s not to love about getting somewhere cheap? But Spirit Airlines is not just cheap, they are malicious money grabbers whose business plan seems to be: Screw Our Clients Over.

Spirit, I have flown a lot of budget airlines, you are the worst. You break people’s things, do not say you are sorry, and do not care. Spirit’s prices are cheap, but like cheap vodka, they are not worth it.

There’s some legal background to understand before understanding just how dubious an operation Spirit is running. Passenger’s rights on International flights are governed by the Warsaw Convention of 1929, which the US signed. This pact imposes strict liability for loss, damage, or delay of passenger baggage during international travel. On an international flight, the airline breaks it, the airline buys it. It has been the law for eighty-five years and every airline I know of but Spirit Airlines follows it.

Personally, I make a modest portion of my income from playing the guitar. In a previous post, I recommended that travelers who travel with a guitar carry one they are not attached to sentimentally because of the many risks travel poses to the life of a guitar.

I break my own advice and carry a guitar with me that means a great deal to me. Being location independent, I want I guitar I love to play. My classical guitar, Upprisa, sounds lovely and carries a glut of memories.

My brother/jamming partner purchased me this guitar as a Christmas gift. It has traveled with me to over a dozen countries. It has a sticker on it from the Yonder Music Festival that my brother and I attended in 2012. There are two stickers of velvet bees given to my brother and I at a bee themed bar in Colorado. Duct tape is covering a picture of a naked woman that an artist drew on the guitar in a park in Montreal. There is a picture of a woman’s face that a famous Central American painter painted on my guitar on stage while I played impromptu songs at an art event in Guatemala City. Part of a pirate bandana still hangs from the head, the lingering of a makeshift strap I Macgyver’d for a show at Rocky Sullivan’s in Red Hook, NYC.

Every airline since ever has allowed me to carry it on a plane, stow it in the closet, gate check it, or put it in the overhead bin. On an international flight, airlines know they are legally liable for damages, so they gladly allow this. In Europe, it is now a law that they must do this. This year the European Parliament passed regulation that forces airlines to allow passengers carry their instruments into the plane’s cabin.

My guitar has led an exciting life and been broken before.  In 2013, when I thought the injuries inflicted on it by United Airlines were fatal. A friend of my sister, Sky Froehlich, fixed the guitar and I played it to record my first LP. This phoenix rebirth is the reason I renamed her Upprisa, Icelandic for resurrection.

When I fly, I insist that I carry my guitar with my on the plane. I’ll pay more, and airlines know that if they break it, they buy it. So imagine my surprise when at New York La Guardia last week my ticketing agent for Spirit Airlines told me that it was airline policy, and I had to either check my guitar or leave it behind.

I told the agent this surprised me, since the airline would be financially liable if the guitar showed up broken. “No,” she said, “we won’t, because you have to sign this, waiving all Spirit Airline’s liability, before I will let you check it.”

Spirit gave me two choices: abandon my guitar at the airport, or risk them breaking it. You cannot argue with airline agents, so I was forced to check it, and my guitar arrived broken. As a musician who is always traveling with a guitar, I will never fly Spirit again. With checked baggage fees that cost $100, they make most of the money you think you are saving back in one way or another. Since I could no longer count my guitar as carry on, I ended up having to pay $100 to check it, which made my spirit flight more expensive than if I had gone with a “more expensive” airline.

Why does Spirit get away with breaking international law? How come no one is suing them? Think about it, few people with the money and means to take legal action against a huge airline fly budget airlines. Spirit knows they can break international laws, make more money and fly away with it. But they won’t be flying with me aboard ever again. And I hope when Expedia shows the cheapest way to get somewhere is thru Spirit, passengers recognize them for the unethical airline they are and go with the next least expensive option.