Originally Posted by
Cloudship
I think you would be pretty hard pressed to find someone who worked in the airline industry, particularly someone at a managerial level who would actually be able to do something with said bag, who did not at least know Delta, United, and American were airline. They may not know a lot of details, but they would know enough that it would give them a clue.
Then again, the rarity that I would even be flying to someplace so remote regularly enough to worry about that on my bag tag probably means it is not a concern for the majority of usage.
I think you over estimate the capabilities of the kind of staff who get to Baggage Services Supervisor/Manager at a typical handling agent throughout the world. Yes you do get some amazing ones but you also get some appalling ones. The good ones seem to be more of a rarity than the bad ones.
And whilst you may not travel to obscure places where handlers really struggle to recruit vaguely competent staff, you need to remember that LAX is rather similar to LAD (Luanda in Angola), BOS is a bit like BOT (Bosset in Papua New Guinea) and EWR is not dissimilar to EWO (Ewo in Republic of Congo).
One does see bags destined for major US airports turn up in not so great airports!