When I was a kid growing up in New York, baggage claim checks were required when leaving the airport with your luggage. I used to only see this at New York-area airports. I helped prevent people from picking up the wrong bag, and also prevent someone from intentionally taking a bag that didn’t belong to them. I haven’t seen that process in a U.S. airport in many years, and of course New York isn’t the city that it used to be when Ed Koch was mayor where this really was necessary.
Maybe that would have stopped two men who have been charged with stealing over $550,000 from U.S. airlines by making false lost luggage claims since 2015.