Interesting thread !
A few weeks ago I was transiting ATL. My connecting flight was a 3 hours stop over. Arrived over 1 hour early so made a mad dash to the departure gate in time to make the earlier flight BUT no even though there was space I could not travel because my baggage was not on that flight.
Sounds good so far eh.
A few weeks before, on a another trip I arrived at my destination Sans Baggage !!
So what does the airline do.
They put it on the next flight Sans Pax !
Structured security ???