I've basically never flown. So I'm asking as somebody who has near-zero experience with airports. Especially modern ones.

I very much worry that, after my luggage is "checked in" and disappears somewhere (hopefully into the airplane), and we arrive at the destination, that it will somehow get lost. Whether it's due to incompetence, malice/theft or a series of unlucky circumstances, I very much fear losing my stuff. I would be stranded with only what I have on me. It would be just like in the 1970 book "Metropole". Shudder...

For this reason, I very much consider buying a traveling bag which is just small enough to be allowed on board the plane, so that I never risk losing track of it. (Unless they force me to put it in the compartment above the seats, but at least then it will be very nearby and far less likely to get lost.)

Assuming that I go for the big/classic luggage which is not allowed to be taken on board, but has to travel in the special "luggage compartment", what prevents somebody from just grabbing it before me when we wait at the destination airport for the thing that makes all the luggage crawl on the floor in a circle? Do they have any kind of check to confirm ownership? From my memory, it was just a big mess of identical-looking bags and random people chaotically just grabbing what was (presumably) theirs. That scene gives me nightmares almost more than the traveling in the air part...

Is the only way to avoid this scenario to only pack what fits in a bag which has the dimensions and weight allowed to go into the passenger area? How do you all solve this problem?