British Airways has apologised to its customers after it emerged that the
airline mishandled 23 bags per 1,000 passengers last year.
Among 24 major European airlines, which are members of the Association of
European Airlines (AEA), BA had the worst record for mislaying passenger
baggage. Members include Air France and Lufthansa.
According to the AEA over 5.6 million bags were mishandled by European
carriers in 2006, of which 85 per cent were returned to their owners within
48 hours.
The figures were released today, and BA did not hesitate to own up. "We
accept that our levels of service have not been up to an acceptable standard
and we fully apologise to customers who have been affected by delayed
baggage in the past year," said a spokesman.
The airline blamed the airport security alerts in August, which saw the amount
of checked baggage increase by 25 per cent. In a statement BA said: "The
volumes of hold baggage going through Heathrow, the change in security
procedures and some airport baggage system failures within Terminal 4 has
not helped our performance."
In addition BA operates at major hub airports and handles considerable amounts
of passengers on connecting flights, which is when mishandling of baggage is
most likely to take place. By comparison low cost airlines such as Ryanair
tend to use smaller airports that handle less passengers and suffer fewer
incidences of baggage congestion.
Although not a member of the AEA, Ryanair also released figures for last year,
claiming to lose only one bag for every 2,000 passengers. The figure is the
lowest the AEA carriers, although Ryanair did not confirm whether figures
are compiled in the same way.
EasyJet has told Times Online Travel that it will not publish its mishandled
baggage figures for comparison, and although they are AEA members, Virgin
Atlantic and bmi have also not submitted figures.
Ryanair was among the first airlines, together with Flybe, to start charging
passengers for checked-in luggage, in March 2006. By comparison BA waited
until February 2007 to introduce baggage fees, and then only for carriage of
a second bag, after initial plans to introduce charges in summer 2006 were
scuppered by the August airport security alerts and a change in cabin
baggage rules.
Speaking for the air travel watchdog, the Air Transport Users Council,
chairman Tina Tietjen said: “When passengers hand over their suitcases at
check-in they should be able to expect to see them the other end. Complaints
to the council show that instances of mishandled baggage can cause
passengers considerable stress, inconvenience and expense. They also show
that passengers often struggle to get reasonable redress from airlines after
the event."
In apologising to customers, BA said mishandling at Heathrow will be reduced
owing to a streamlining of the baggage handling process - and in 2008 the
move of more than 90 per cent of BA flights to Terminal 5 "will
significantly reduce the number of connecting transfer bags which get
delayed between flights in the tunnel between our current homes of Terminal
1 and Terminal 4," added the spokesman.
