What happens to my luggage?

            The easiest way to take your items with you is to "check" a bag. There are a number of reasons people may choose to check a bag, the number one reason being convenience. Why carry your bag through the airport with you when you could have someone else take care of loading it and delivering to your final destination?

             There are two different types of checked baggage, your standard checked bag and a gate check. Standard checked luggage is any item checked in at the ticket counter. It will be loaded on to your plane and hopefully meet you at baggage claim at your final destination. After you hand your bag over to a ticket agent, it will be tagged and placed on a conveyor belt where it will be taken to be screened by the TSA. I can not tell you the exact screening process, which is considered sensitive security information (SSI), but I can tell you it is subject to a number of different screening processes, such as explosive detection, x-ray imaging, or hand search by a security officer. It is important to remember that there are several prohibited items. Click here to see some of these items.
                After the screening process, your bag will travel to a baggage makeup room, or bag room for short. In the bag room, a ramp agent or baggage handler will peel a sticker from your bag and place it on a baggage cart. The bag will remain in the bag room until your flight arrives. Once the plane arrives, the bags will be brought out to the aircraft where they will be loaded into the baggage compartment.
                 Baggage handlers have a reputation for being bag tossers. I can not confirm nor deny the this matter. The truth is, some people are more gentle with your items than others. The fact of the matter is luggage is stacked and packed into the baggage compartments to ensure that all the items fit onto the aircraft. It is a guarantee that your luggage will be stacked with all the other bags and is subject to damage. The point I am trying to make is that you can not expect your luggage to be treated as a fragile item. If you have an item you are concerned about, it it best to bring it in your carry-on if possible, or ship it.
                The biggest question I get is "how does the airline lose my luggage?" There is not an exact answer to this question, there is a number of ways your luggage could be lost. The number one point for lost luggage is at a connecting flight. You can almost guarantee if your flight has a connection time of less than 30 minutes, your luggage will not make it on your connecting flight. In the airline industry this isn't considered a lost bag, instead it is consider a left off bag. Generally the bag will be loaded on the next flight to your destination and will arrive just a few hours after you. The second most common reason your luggage is lost is due to a tag being lost. If your bag tag is lost it makes it very hard to keep track of a bag. The tag is your bags identification. It contains all the information needed for your bag to make it to its destination. Generally a sticker will be taken off the tag and placed on your bag in case this happens, but it is best to make sure you have your information placed in your bag somewhere.
                    If your luggage is lost, never fear, technology is here! From the time your bag is first placed on the belt at the ticket counter, until the time it is unloaded at baggage claim, your bag is being tracked and time stamped. If you do have the misfortune of having your luggage lost, the baggage claim representative will be able to find out exactly where your bag is and resolve the issue.

A word from the Airline Insider- "People always have a fear that their luggage will be left off. Typically a domestic flight will have 70-100 bags carried on it. Generally one person will arrive at their destination per flight to find that their bag has not. That means there is a 1-5% chance that your bag will be lost. This statistic compared to the number of bags handled per day is actually quite amazing. In the eyes of the airline, however, this number is still too high. It may seem that the airline doesn't care much about your lost bag, but on the contrary, lost bags leads to lost revenue, which is a serious concern for the airline. As always, my number one recommendation to anyone concerned about lost luggage, is to simply carry-on."