Leather vs plastic luggage tags: which survives the baggage system
A luggage tag has one job and a brutal environment in which to do it. Between check-in and the carousel, a bag goes through steel chutes, tight belt transfers, high-speed diverters and being thrown onto a metal cart, and every one of those stages is a chance for something to snag and tear.
What actually fails, in order
The attachment fails first, almost every time. Not the tag body - the loop. Thin elastic loops perish with UV and temperature cycling and snap without warning. Plastic buckle straps crack at the buckle, especially after a cold hold at altitude followed by a hot apron. Whatever holds the tag on is the weak link, and it is worth judging a tag on the loop before anything else.
The second failure is the window. Clear PVC and vinyl windows go cloudy and brittle with sun exposure, then split along a fold. A card you cannot read is a tag that has stopped working, even though it is still physically attached.
The third is the printing. Ink on a paper insert runs the first time the bag sits out in rain on a loading trolley.
Where plastic wins
Plastic tags are cheap, waterproof, and disposable, which is genuinely the right answer in some situations. If you are checking a bag once, or shipping something, or tagging a case that lives in storage, a hard plastic tag with a metal cable loop is perfectly sensible.
They also do not care about being soaked, which soft leather does mind.
Where leather wins
Leather is a strong material in tension and it does not become brittle in cold the way plastic does. A leather tag with a proper strap or a metal loop tends to outlast the case it is attached to. It also handles the repeated flex of a belt transfer far better - the same flexibility that lets a leather wallet fold thousands of times without cracking.
The second advantage is visibility. Leather in tan, oxblood or blue reads clearly against the black shell that most cases are, and it swings, which the eye picks up long before it picks up a flat sticker. That matters more than people expect, as covered in spotting your suitcase at baggage claim.
The third is that leather tags typically use a covered card slot rather than an open window, so your details face inward and are not readable by everyone standing near you.
What to look for in either material
Check the loop first: a steel cable or a riveted leather strap beats elastic every time. Check that the details are covered rather than exposed. Check that the card is a proper insert rather than printed on the tag itself, so you can change a phone number without buying a new tag.
Grain matters in leather for the same reason it matters in wallets - full grain keeps its fibre structure and resists tearing at the punch hole, while corrected and bonded leathers do not. The distinction is unpacked in decoding leather labels.
The honest recommendation
If you fly more than twice a year, a full grain leather tag such as the Riva Address Tag is the better long-run purchase: it survives the system, it is visible on the belt, and it keeps your details covered. If you fly once and are tagging a borrowed case, buy the plastic one and do not think about it again.
Whichever you pick, what goes on the card matters as much as the tag itself. That part is in what to write on a luggage tag.