This subject gets talked about every six months on every fly fishing bulletin board in cyper-world. Everyone has their stories. The one seed I keep planting is that as a group, fly fishermen really are a large group and do A LOT of air travel. A proper function of our largest organizations, like the FFF, would be to approach the airlines with oour problem, the fact that long rod cases don't run through the standard luggage conveyors, are often enough lost, or stolen, ruining lifetime trips to exotic places where replacement equipment is impossible. All that is needed is a simple, consistent policy change to allow rod cases into the cabins, to be stacked in the closet or wherever. In the airlines favor, they have gotten better about lost rods, seems, talking to lots of flyers. But, it still happens, or they are ripped off, often enough that we all have nightmares and invest in 4 piece rods that we can hand carry without question.
I keep mentioning this in hope that someone official from the FFF will hear it and go, "Yeah, good idea. I'll get on that" 11,000 highly mobile and vocal sportsmen should be able to get some attention.