Originally Posted by
Often1
Isn't this the point? The tags are just to make people feel important and special. It's the bar code which determines where the bag goes and thus how it is fed to the carousel on arrival.
If the baggage system is pretty automated then you'll see F and J being put into the first container off the plane - but the "last mile" as it were (i.e. unloading onto the belts), is still manual at some places, so they'll use the colour tags instead to sort - that way F and iO come out before J - and indeed, BT1/2 bags come out before BT3 tags as the BT1/2 bags are on top!