Had a major baggage issue landing at ORD on AS connecting to an AA flight to FCO with a five hour layover. At the gate for the connection I happened to check my AirTags and 4 hours after the fact my bags were still at the Alaska gate at the United terminal. I asked the AA CSR to chase them down and boarded. 20 minutes later I checked and they were still there, the captain happened to walk by and I asked him to intervene. He called baggage and then came back to tell me “Alaska has to bring the bags to AA per contract”, so I called a very helpful Alaska CSR on the 800 line who then called ORD station and the said “American was supposed to pick them up”. Now 15 minutes before departure I called Alaska again and she told me their station manager had grabbed our bags and taken them to the AA gate which was a terminal away. Moments later the AirTags showed them loaded and the AA app showed them as such. My point is if I didn’t intervene I would have never had our bags catch up with us and this should not have happened. I paid for J on these flights for both of us, booked on the Alaska site and it seems the AA relationship is a little messed up in Chicago at least with bags. I am booking another trip for this September and really doubt we will use the AS/AA relationship again, it really added unnecessary stress to the trip. Has anyone ran into this?