I should have sent an update sooner.
I took my iPad Air to an official apple licensed repair center in my part of Japan.
They told me that bends like mine (and OP's) are not covered by the warranty and that a replacement iPad Air would cost me 32,000 yen (roughly 320 USD). That was out of the question, so I immediately called Apple and explained my situation.
They payed to have my ipad shipped to them to have it looked at by an Apple engineer. They told me not to expect much and that it could take 10 days to have my ipad shipped back to me.
Two days later a replacement iPad Air arrived with no explanation other than something like "a thorough diagnostic inspection has revealed that a replacement iPad product is necessary".
So it looks like they decided to be nice to me without really wanting to take open responsibility for the problem--which I suspect is a design flaw.
My new iPad Air I keep in a sturdier case, which sort of ruins the benefit of its thinner and lighter design. Although I firmly believe that the problem has nothing to do with how I handled my original (eventually bent) iPad Air, I'm loathe to have the same problem happen again, and since I don't know exactly how it happened, I'm just being extra cautious just in case.
Best of luck!
