I always take a photo of my luggage before I check it. Then when I have to describe it, I can show them what it looks like on my digital screen on my camera.

I think the longest luggage delivery delay I had was about 24 hours. I do not recall how many times my luggage was late over the years, but my missing a flight due to airline delays is now much more common than my luggage being later to arrive than me.

Luggage delays happen, but are much less frequent now than a decade or two ago.

I always use two luggage tags, on rare occasion the bag arrives with only one tag. And when you open my luggage, on top is a copy of my itinerary, so if all the tags get stripped off of my luggage at least they can figure out who owns it and where it was supposed to be.

Some of the airlines are starting to experiment with chips imbedded in airline luggage tags. Not sure if that will help much for on time delivery, but it may speed things up when it gets misplaced in transit, as their computer system might be better at knowing where it is.