Why no lightweight hard-shell transport cases?

Am I the only one who wishes for a large lightweight hard-shell suitcase with padded dividers that can safely transport studio flash heads via airplane. The only options available are super heavy Pelican cases or soft and supple ones like Tenba and Thinktank.

What I want is something like this but with padded interior and dividers. Is that too much to ask?

I did a quick compare between a Samsonite spinner vs Pelican 1614. The Samsonite shows a weight of 13 lbs. The Pelican is 20 lbs. By the time you put 20 or 30 lbs of gear, the difference (43 vs 50) isn't that great I guess. I've never owned a hard sided luggage piece, but they always look flimsy to me. For $280 I'd want the luggage to be bomb proof and durable. To me that says Pelican, not Samsonite.

OTOH a comparable Zarges case is only 17 lbs. Not quite the same thing though.

Where will you put the light stands and booms and soft boxes ?

Kind of an issue of physics. "Light weight" and "hard shell" doesn't really play well together, especially when you are filling it with fairly heavy items. I've found that the light weight 'luggage' grade bags, rather than gear boxes like Pelican style cases, tend to not hold up nearly as well when you fill them with dense items going through baggage handling. When filled with clothes and such they do fine as the load stressing isn't as high due to the low density and having all the mass spread out across the whole case. When you instead fill them with a fairly dense item, and then try tossing them around baggage handling systems, then you wind up with harsher stress gradients in the material which leads to an increase in failure rate.

At this point I'm thinking that rather than bringing stuff like lighting gear along with me with the limited baggage options on an airplane that I will instead just ship anything overly bulky ahead of me through a courier instead. I'll have more sensible options for boxing stuff up, have less stuff to deal with while I'm at the airports themselves, and if something DOES go wrong and something gets destroyed, then the insurance on it will actually cover the cost of the item rather than having to deal with the common airline view of "Well it isn't really our fault and it probably wasn't worth that much anyway."

You might want to check out monoprice.com

They have some pelican knock offs that were significantly cheaper, maybe lighter too. Otherwise old school aluminum sided cases (think spy movie with a bomb or pile of cash in it) are very light and strong.

What about Plano? They make some decent cases. Not sure if they are big enough though.

Golf club cases work for lights and stands

You bring up a good point. SKB cases are slightly lighter than Pelicans, yet claim to be stronger. And while I prefer SKB cases over Pelicans, they still probably weigh too much for economical air travel. I have some foam-lined, hard-plastic Elinchrom cases which are nicely designed, but likely aren't meant to travel as an air-pack (the hinges and/or fasteners would probably crack and break). The only case I own that I would trust in baggage is the Pelican-like Elinchrom case made for my Ranger Quadra. I should've just kept the cardboard boxes the other Elinchrom cases came in--packed in those, the cases would be much more likely to survive in baggage.