So, later today I'll be checking a bag on a Republic-branded F9 flight. Why? Because I've got to bring a guitar home to family (DEN-SAT), and I trust my carry-on skills more than the skills of F9 baggage handlers to get the instrument safely from point A to point B.

At least I hope I'll be able to carry on...

For those of you wondering what all the other pax will do with an instrument potentially taking over the entire overhead bin, I'm sitting in 3A, on an E9B configured aircraft. So I'm on the single-seat side of 1x2 seating. 38" seat pitch might even allow me to squeeze the instrument in under my feet.

This actually isn't the first time that I've travelled with this instrument, but the last time it happened was in May 2008, when I and two other people brought 90% of my stuff from college back to TX on an A319. This included two instruments (the guitar was in the overhead that time) and lots of checked bags (which were free at the time).

Any bets on where I'll have to end up putting the instrument? I'm a bit leery of checking because its case is *barely* a hard case.