I'd always check in my Manfrotto 055CL during my travels over past 4 years- India, Mongolia, Beijing, London, Edinburgh all without problems. Reason is my tripod is very tall and heavy, so it will be very clumsy to carry as cabin luggage. I only carry the bare essentials on my cabin luggage and of course the camera and lenses. The latter 2 items are already bulky enough. No need to add another tripod on top of them all.
I put my tripod in my backpack cos I go backpacking and never carried those nice protective hard casing hand luggage. Nevertheless, the tripod survived them all and I'm still happily using my tripod. Nevertheless, I remove my tripod head from the body and pack the head with with my clothings. Manfrotto tripods are very sturdy and are meant to survive the outdoors, so it ain't a problem.