Road case

A road case, roadie case, ATA case or flight case is a shipping container specifically built to protect musical instruments, motion picture equipment, audio and lighting production equipment, properties, or other sensitive equipment when it must be moved between locations, or frequently thrown around by airport baggage-handling personnel. A large number of varying-sized road cases can be built to outfit the needs of an entire touring production company, or custom designed individually for a specific industry or product.

The term road case is mostly used in the United States and implies that the case is primarily for road based travel, unlike a flight case. The term originates from its use for storing and shipping band equipment while the musicians were on the road.

History

The history of "flight" case design is based on an airplane parts packaging specification. It was designed by airline packaging engineers. The specification is ATA 300 Category I. ATA is the A4A (Airlines for America) International, formerly the Air Transport Association of America located in Washington, D.C. and consists of members like Boeing Airlines, Airbus, Fed-Ex, American Airlines, United Airlines, and Delta Air Lines. ATA 300 Cat I cases are designed to withstand 100 round trips, Cat II containers 10 round trips, and Cat III containers 1 round trip.. The original design required the cases to be white, so they would not be left on the airport runway when loading cases at night time. The first ATA 300 spec was published on August 1, 1960. <http://airlines.org/>