I absolutely never fly or ship my accordions anywhere. You can't trust baggage handlers and you wouldn't believe what they do to some of these boxes.

I work for a large equipment manufacturer and we had boxed up some equipment in some very product-specific ATA cases and the equipment unbelievably came out of the boxes completely broken. They must have dropped them about 10 feet onto concrete to sustain that kind of damage.

When a top-of-the-line custom accordion costs $7000+ (and you guys thought arrangers were expensive!) you learn to play gigs where you can drive and to leave the flying to the birds.

Tommy