Agreed, UAs lost baggage handling is a disaster (for customers). While no statistics are published, the anecdotal evidence is that in 2006 UA has been losing bags at much higher rate than prior years.

And it's no fun standing in a line of distressed angry customers each of whom takes 5-10min to process. One small improvement, like CO at IAH, would be to have a waiting lounge where you put your name down on a list and are called in turn.

Most times the bag is delivered with in a day or so - but if not, and you need to contact UA eg to say you have are leaving town, that's when the game starts.

There is a 1k hotline for tracing lost bags, which rings in Chicago and is answered promptly 24 hours a day. [In office hours you are especially likely to encounter someone who makes sense.] But if you are not a 1k you are subjected to an insulting succession of on-hold punctuated with uninformative nonsense see
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...77#post6484577

Baggage-tag scanners, yes, all depends how diligently the baggage-handlers are scanning tags as they load or unload aircraft. Actually I did encounter a UA rep in the arrival hall at ORD who had a handheld scanner and was able to tell me immediately that my bag never got loaded on the flight. If one of these scanners were available for public use ...

... or if the airline would publish a list of missing bags at the carousel...

...LH lost my bag last week at LHR, the agents already had a list of delayed bags and took my delivery address in about 1 minute - the 2 agents processed about 10 pax in 5 minutes.