How do you travel with your instrument? Do you always carry it on the plane with you? Do you just check it in, packed in whatever crappy case you have? Or do you have a certified flight case?

Unless you carry it on, it turns out it might not matter.

Tim Larson, a Chicago-based singer-songwriter had a gig at Dive Bar in Las Vegas. He was leaving Midway Airport at 7:50 a.m. on May 25. Normally Larson uses an acoustic but this time out he decided to bring along the 1976 Gibson SG he recently bought and had fixed up.

"I checked it in and I went through security and to the gate," says Larson. "I carried my amp with me because it was small enough to fit in the overhead."

Why did Larson check his SG instead of carrying it on? His response is one any musician who travels regularly by air can relate to.

"I checked it in because you never know if the person at the counter will let you carry it on," says Larson. "I guess they do it by how booked the flight is."

He is being charitable. Many times, and with most airlines the decision to let you carry on an instrument is a Zen thing. Maybe they will allow it, maybe they will not, which makes it tough to have expectations. Sometimes, mentioning the cost of the instrument helps. Sometimes it doesn't. In Larson's case he did more than most. He bought a certified hard-shell SKB travel case--the sort of case that most airlines say is what you need to have for them to cover any damage to the instrument (rarely, if ever, do they cover damage to the case).

When Larson landed in Las Vegas he went to the carousel.

"Down the chute came my guitar case, open. That scared me. I could see something was wrong because the strings were not in line, " says Larson. "When I pulled it off the carousel the headstock was cracked at the nut. The only thing holding it on was the strings."

Larson then went to the Southwest airlines customer service/baggage area. They asked if there was a problem and he told them there was a big one. Their first response was to deny any responsibility. One woman became outright rude and told him to call their corporate office. He called and made a claim.

Larson was told was that the damage occurred "within the case" and that it therefore wasn't their fault.

"That was, obviously, not the case because the case was open." says Larson.

SKB cases also do not just pop open. They take some doing to get open. Because of the SKB twist-locking handles, a human or a particularly dextrous simian has to open these cases very much on purpose. What seems likely here is that someone opened the case and didn't know how to properly shut it. There was no Transportation Security Administration seal on the case so that leaves Southwest employees.

Southwest's corporate office told Larson to file a claim with TSA as well. He did so. The TSA told him it would take 6 months to a year. One Southwest employee told him that if he fights the bureaucracy for a year he "might get something."

They also asked him if he had a receipt for the guitar (perhaps thinking "doesn't everybody have a receipt for a 30 year old thing"?). They were taken aback that Larson did have a receipt. Shocked. They asked him if he was sure it wasn't broken when he bought it. Not only wasn't it but he had brought it in to be set up at Third Coast Guitar in Chicago.

Then they asked him why he didn't lock the case.

This question comes from the mouth of someone working for an airline, which has to set some kind of record for wrongness. The law has been for years now that unless you use a special TSA approved lock you cannot lock luggage. It is uncertain if there are any of these approved locks that will work on travel cases (although it is true that some SKB cases feature the TSA-approved lock). In any case these cases do not need a lock--except to prevent theft.

Next on this topic, we talk to Southwest, TSA and SKB on traveling with instruments. There will be videos. Keep an eye here at Gearwire. And feel free to share your stories. And think of poor Tim Larson when you do.