Edit: Thanks for taking the time out to reply. I’m enjoying reading all the different explanations and view points.
In: Other
There’s two factors in this.
The first is that a lot of companies are involved in luggage. The airline doesn’t put your luggage on the plane or take it off. That’s an airport service. And sometimes the people who do the luggage are their own company contracted by the airport (like Swissport). The more companies that get involved (different company taking off than landing) the more the chain of custody increases. If you have four stop overs that’s at least six different companies involved in your luggage. So let’s say you take a flight from Washington DC to New York City to Luxembourg. You check in your luggage with your airline. It goes to the airline’s people who put it on your plane. When you land in New York the New York airline people take it off and then transfer it to your next flight. Its now back to the responsibility of your airline until it lands in Luxembourg at which point it comes off the plane to you. In 99% of lost luggage cases it’s not the airline that loses it, it’s the airports. They either put it on the wrong flight or they can’t transfer it fast enough.
The other factor is that airlines are still a people orientated system. A person could scan in 10 pieces of luggage bound for Italy and then get to your Luxembourg luggage and just toss it in with Italy. Almost no amount of technology gets rid of operator error.
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