I travel back and forth from Vancouver to Montreal/Toronto lots, and to Europe a couple of times a year. I've been checking a guitar into baggage for years - always well packed, padded, headstock especially firm, and with an old leather belt tightly buckled and tied around the waist of the case. Never, so far, had an issue.
Lately I have seen more and more people carrying guitars on board - I've not tried it yet with the people's airline here - Air Canada are getting increasingly famous for bad, bad, really bad customer service. Next time I go east I'll take the M-20 or the Mark-IV (smaller cases), get to checkin early so that if it can't go on the plane, I'll have time to check it. I travel in the extremely cheap seats at the back of the bus, so, unlike California's preferred treatement, I'll be able to test how one of the world's least favourite airlines treats its least favoured customers - should be the limiting case.
But I know the Stan Rogers story as well (everyone in Canadian music know the Stan Rogers story). John Alan Cameron, another Canadian player, had some sort of airline incident with his guitar as well. I remember Stan well from his early days when he was a regular at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival - belting it out in the pouring rain, always just a hell of an entertainer, always good for a tipple and a story backstage. He was, to my mind, the best songwriter Canada ever produced. And that's fierce competion - Mitchell, Young, Lightfoot, Tyson, Cohen among many others - had Stan not died so young (33?), he would have been the greatest of them all. He was just embarking on what he thought was his life's work, a chronicle in song of working people all across the country, when that airplane caught fire. Imagine, losing someone like Stan Rogers because a airplane toilet disposal pump overheats - he would have written a song about it.
I was on the road in the US when he died, and didn't hear about it immediately. A week or two later I was in Toronto, and saw the marquee at the United Church near Bloor and Clinton with "Stan Rogers Memorial Service" - I managed to squeeze in at the back of the church - I think every musician in Canada was there, and a hell of a lot of fans. You should have heard us all doing "Mary Ellen Carter" - makes the hair stand up on my neck just remembering it. What a loss. I sing "Lies" and "Night Guard" when I'm in ranching country ' "Lies" makes the women (and me) cry, "Night Guard" makes the ranchers (and me) angry. Such tunes.