Protect the board, at all costs. Just do it.
We have had wind blow boards off the top of vehicles, we have had boards closed in doors, we have had boards ground down from the wheels on gear karts, and we have had for a variety of reasons found boards with scrapes, scratches, holes, and cracks in them for reasons we never figured out.
The worst for us though, are soft foil or wing boards in bags with unsecure screws. Having holes pressed into the boards from the screws floating around and ending up on top or bottom of the board and then the weight of other bags being placed on top. Not to mention dents, scrapes, slices, and gouges from airport handling!
It’s hard to keep a perfect board despite how hard you try. A few things we do now when we travel, we take everything off the boards. Kiteboards we wrap in a towel and lay flat in the bag, sometimes we will take pipe insulation or pool noodles and wrap the edges of the boards.
Foil and wing boards we often tape up cardboard on the tips as well as the top and bottom decks. For nuts, bolts, fins, and the other misc. hardware, we wrapped that all up and place the nose of the board, inside the foot straps, or a separate bag altogether.
