For what it's worth I'm in a similar situation and went with a folding "acoustic" guitar theBone. More info here:
http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/f...hlight=thebone
After owning this thing for about a month I think the OP is on the right track. I'm not thrilled about the prospect of checking luggage but I'm not really enjoying the guitar I picked and I'm pretty sure a real acoustic instrument would be more fun. For practice it does do what I hoped but a silent guitar just isn't the same to me as making music with an acoustic.
Journey Overhead was what I was leaning to when I was debating this a few months back basically because of TSA compliance.