There is absolutely at least a variation in cabin pressure to the point my WestJet flight in 2004 spidered the screen on my Duobook 230 and that was in my carry-on.
By law airliners have to maintain a cabin pressure equating to an altitude of 8000 feet or less. This translates to a worst case of around 11 PSI verses the 14.7 standard sea level reading. This is certainly not "nothing", if you buy a sealed bag of chips at Narita International and decide to open it mid-flight you'll find it blown up nice and firm and possibly risk blowing Doritos all over your seat if you give it a squeeze, but color me a little skeptical that difference should be enough to crack an LCD that wasn't already physically compromised. I mean, if the pressure were *suddenly* changed by a quarter atmosphere you might shock it enough to cause damage, but there's a non-zero chance a shock like this would also have ruptured your eardrums.
(FWIW, it's my vague memory at least that the insides of LCD screens are actually
at a mild vacuum compared to the outside world because there's a degassing stage as part of the manufacturing process. IE, the glass had to survive pressure changes well in excess of an airline flight when it was rolling down the assembly line. It's certainly *possible* that with enough wear and tear and accumulated stress an airline flight could be the last straw, but it's also possible that the guy sitting behind you shoved his bag into the carry-on bin on top of yours with just a little too much enthusiasm. And if it's not a carry on, well... I've sat near the window at the airport and seen what the baggage handlers do even when they know they're being watched.)
Anyway, my point there was just that there's no difference in pressure between the cabin seating and cargo deck in any commercial airliner other than a few *very small* regional turboprops. The cargo aircraft used by normal delivery services are also pressurized to similar levels as the airliners they're derived from and kept at reasonable temperatures, because there's a lot of things that would react pretty badly to the ~.25 bar they'd otherwise experience, and you'd need to make substantial physical modifications to the plane like adding a heavy pressure bulkhead around the entire cabin to isolate the pilots.
Transportation did not cause this. The seller did a bait and switch. You did not receive the unit in the original photos, this should be adequate reason to force a return on any moderated sales platform
I'm inclined to agree here. This looks suspiciously like a case of
"Vinegar Syndrome" or similar degradation of the bonding between the LCD itself and the polarizer. If that's what it is, well, I suppose it's *hypothetically possible* a change in air pressure could have caused these weird spidery bubbles to just suddenly all pop loose at once, but... yeah, a bait and switch seems a lot more likely.
Since it in fact doesn't look like the glass itself is cracked and the OP seems pretty insistent on keeping this thing replacing the polarizing film would be a possibility here. Google around and there are plenty of accounts about DIY-ing it. The VERY hard part, of course, is getting the old film off without breaking the glass...
