Flying is great when it all goes off without a hitch. Unfortunately, it's still fairly common to land at your destination, only to find out that all of your belongings didn't make the trip with you.
According to U.S. Department of Transportation documents obtained by The Washington Post, there were more than 1.6 million cases of "lost, damaged, delayed, or pilfered baggage" filed in the first nine months of 2014 — and that only accounts for domestic flights. The Post breaks it down by airline below (and note that Envoy Air is the new name of American Eagle):
If these numbers don't seem that bad, just note that they are a bit underestimated: The percentages are calculated by dividing the total number of passengers on the plane by the number of passengers whose bags were mishandled. This means that the government is counting every passenger, despite the fact that many travelers carry on luggage and don't check bags at all — thus diluting these percentages.