On Christmas Eve, my bags were in the first 10 off the plane. Also, in SEA which usually is painfully SLOW, our luggage was coming down the carousel as the first passengers arrived from the South Satellite Terminal.

I read a story about how certain CO employees were mad so they purposely delayed unloading priority bags. It seemed that the tags identified who flew frequently and could hurt the airline by changing airlines. Oh, that's nasty behavior!

Star Alliance carriers all have one common Priority/Gold Tag-- and when I was *A Gold, I would say I got my bags first about 95% of the time.
So, it's humanly possible for this priority baggage thing to work. Either NWA hasn't figured out how *A (with 15+ airlines!!) somehow does it, or they don't see this as a priority for FC and Elites....it's gotta be one of those. Which one do you think it is? I'm guessing it's the second, since NWA is usually good at other technological things (eg, nwa.com)