Long time no see, Cabledonut! How's it going overthere?

In answer to the original question, I took a bike on a plane for my tour of Western Victoria last year. I bought a "body bag" from Groundeffect (http://www.groundeffect.co.nz) and was able to pack the bike into that without too much dismantling, nor did I get charged anything extra for it. However, if you're going to take this option, you'll probably need to pack some other things around it (clothes etc) to protect the bike from the things that airline baggage handlers tend to do.

Also remember that whatever option you use needs to be able to be used again for the return flight, and probably carried around with you during the tour. The bag I mentioned weighs about 900g. I don't know about some of the others.