There is a reason that I always take a photo of my luggage before I check it, I can explain to the lost luggage staff in much better detail what my luggage looks like if I can show them a photo on my camera screen.



Above was my Iceland trip, the big black and olive green bags were checked. Below my Canadian Maritimes trip, the big black bag and the orange backpack were checked. Other bags were carried on the plane.



I even had a gate checked bag disappear. Some moron grabbed mine instead of his. He realized it later, and came back to get his instead. I have no clue how he got my medium blue backpack that also had wheels confused with a dark blue daypack that lacked wheels.

That said, airlines are much better now that the tags they put on bags are really hard to tear off of a bag. A few decades ago the tags that listed which airport it went to were easily torn off, at which time the airline could take a long time to figure out where a bag was supposed to go once their airport tag was ripped off.