If you sign a waiver then you agree to everything on that waiver. If it says that you can not ask for damages, then that's what it means.
Checking at the gate may have avoided that waiver, or not.
I recently traveled to Ecuador with a guitar that was checked at the gate. They didn't ask me to sign anything and the guitar made it through safely.
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“Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.”
― G.K. Chesterton
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