I've travelled with a bike a fair bit and I thought I had an understanding of how it worked. We've got a variety of options in our article about the best bike bags but my understanding was that there was a fairly basic arms race happening. On one side was the whole infrastructure involved in flying, in which at each step of the journey, someone was attempting to move your bike bag as quickly as possible with as little effort as possible and couldn't care much for the bike itself inside. On the other side, there was a whole industry of brands always looking for new ways to mitigate against damage by packaging bikes safely but also conveniently.
In the middle of these two sides is you and your bike. You care deeply about your bike but you also have to make real-world decisions. Airlines have gotten stricter about weight restrictions and bikes have gotten more integrated and harder to pack. Your itinerary once landing might also dictate your choice of bike bag. The bottom line though, there are reasons you might choose to fly with one bag vs another and the absolute best protection isn't always the deciding factor.
