When it comes to the paint and finish, I concur that a touring bike is supposed to look like it has been somewhere. But airline employees can be pretty rough on things. The engineers that design bikes design them to be strong enough for the purpose. But the purpose is the bike being ridden with a load on it. They do not design bikes to be strong enough for a side load that could taco a wheel, dent the frame, bend a fork, etc.

One person on this board a few years ago was looking out the window at the airport he was at and saw an airline employee was having an angry fit and was kicking his bike box. I think he got a video of part of it.

Years ago, I traveled a lot for work and I worked outdoors with a lot of specialized equipment. I bought a new suitcase. I knew an airline employee that handled luggage and also loaded food onto airliners. I asked him what he thought of that brand and model of suitcase. He said it was terrible. I asked why and he said just a few days earlier when he drove the food truck over a suitcase just like mine, it destroyed it. But a week before that when he drove a tractor over a soft bag with no frame, you could hardly tell that he had driven a vehicle over the bag.