My experience is that ANYTHING in checked luggage of any perceived value is fair game to be stolen. It’s no more complicated than that. And if you complain to the supervisor (which of course occurs only AFTER you’ve returned home and found stuff missing) you’ll be politely laughed at as they claim they take theft from baggage very seriously.
You have absolutely zero recourse in this situation. Maybe you have a receipt. Maybe you just flew in from some distant venue and you have the receipt showing you bought your item there. But you have no way of proving that the receipted item or items were ever in your bags. There’s nowhere to go in these situations, the supervisors will take no action. You put stuff in checked baggage, if it has any value, it will be stolen. It’s a certainty.
Decades ago when I traveled to Africa, checked a bag and my dirty underwear was stolen. . .and since we brought those same stinky-butt-in-the-air praying third-world thieves to the US and employ them as “security,” we will see these muslime thief’s start stealing everything from meds to dirty underwear.
Its their culture. . .and we can’t judge them, after all, and since all cultures are equal.
By the way - I see a great undercover journalism opportunity here.
Have a great experiment shipping computers, cash, gold-coins, opioid medicines on a statistically significant number of specific airline routes throughout the country.
Track the bags via GPS, and if technologically possible, where they are opened.
Results would be very interesting.
When my gunsmith, and I went to SHOTshow, , flying from SAT,
we both had stuff stolen at the walk through screening.. he had a watch stolen out of the bin they make you deposit things in as you walk through. I had stuff stolen out of my carry on.
He went right back to the screener..was told “Oh, the other guy just left..change of shift. Sorry, I can’t help you.”