Originally Posted by
Doge
I found this blurb:
Except where required
under the Montreal
Convention, Frontier is not
liable for the mentioned
items if you pack them
and they are damaged
unless packed in a hardsided
case.
If just for legal/terms reasons I'm going to be using the hard case over the soft case for flights on some airlines.
IME....collecting on damages from an airline is about as successful as collecting from UPS. they will do everything in their power to make it hard/impossible and will blame your packaging. of course, packing in a soft-sided case will immediately invalidate any claims in your example.
also IME, it is pretty darn rare for a bike to be damaged beyond all repair. even if a frame is destroyed (by an airline's rough handling or a crash in a race), the components are OK.....or if you destroy a wheel, the frame is fine. if someone has a "ten thousand dollar bike" it would be rare to have a case where it did not disappear and required anywhere near that money to fix/replace the damaged bits.
so....for me it comes down to cost/benefit. a hard-sided bike case is pretty much guaranteed to get hit with oversize/over-weight fees. if you multiply those fees by the # of trips, does it exceed the $180 to, say, do a carbon repair stay if there was some damage during one flight in 40?
just throwing out a hypothetical example here, but you get the point.