I don't know exactly what technology SWA uses for baggage tracking, but last year when I flew OMA-DEN-LAS and my bags did not arrive in LAS with my flight, the baggage agent there was able to consult her computer and tell me exactly where my bag was, why it had missed the connection, and what flight it would be on, and when it would delivered to my hotel.

It looks like Frontier made some sort of investment in baggage tracking (the tags have bar codes) but then did not bother following through. Same with the boarding pass scanners at the gate -- they were scanned and presumably (maybe?) validated against the pax list, but did not alert the gate agent that our seats had been reassigned. (Lucky for us, but not the correct behavior.) Again, I do know other airlines do this: when there was a slight aircraft config change on a recent United flight, when I tried to board the gate scanner popped up an alert (my seat no longer existed on that config) and I was given a new boarding pass.

So either (1) they stopped spending money in the middle of an IT upgrade, or (2) their IT people are simply not clueful. Couple this with some other things I learned from the agent at SLC, including (1) she was told they are laying off all outstation staff, in fact nearly all of the employees other than in DEN, and replacing them with outsourced contractors, and (2) they plan to start charging for carry-on luggage.