There is another side to this besides the protection of the equipment, its stopping the thieves getting there sweaty mitts on your very expensive laptop. Nothing says to a thief steal me more than an expensive looking case IMO. The other problem is that most of the airlines don’t have insurance cover which protects you for the full value of the equipment either, DSLR’s, lenses, laptops etc pretty often exceed their limits and now as we are forced to put these into the hold instead of taking them as hand luggage it leaves us open to losing our beloved equipment and facing little or no compensation.
I also read that professional musicians have been hit badly by this, their often very expensive instruments which previously they have been able to take as hand luggage is also now subject to the recently introduced rules. The bigger problem for them is that the instruments are usually very personal to them and in the case of string instruments, no matter how well they are packed if they go into the hold the excessive temperature changes often damage them causing them to become unusable.
While I understand the need to protect travellers against terrorist attack, I wonder if some of these new rules are not just a knee jerk reaction to make it look like the authorities are doing something positive. I mean, how many travelling musicians must there be and how difficult can it really be to check say a Violin to see if its likely to be packed with explosives
