The club that I am with is deciding to possibly fly to the next nationals in Florida. With that said how does one properly secure his completed model so that least amount of damage is done. I have heard of horror stories about handling miscues by airlines. Any assistance would be graciously accepted.

You need a box larger than the largest dimension of the model. Construct a cradle inside the box made of foam cut so as to suspend the model in the cenrtre of the box. I usually use styrofoam around the perimeter and on the largest supports to keep the box from distorting and then squeeze in some soft foam to hold the model stationary in its cradle.

An alternative is to use layers of soft foam with a cutout shaped like your model. The first layer solid, then holes for the landing gear, then a model-shaped hole, then a last solid layer. You would of course have to modify this depending no how thick your foam is.

The idea of each of these approaches is to hold the model tightly where it's strongest and keep the weaker parts suspended in air.