flyblue
29th Oct 2003, 15:20
Baggage woes jam Italy's air hubs
Complaints mushroom over airports in Milan and Rome
By Elisabetta Povoledo/IHT (IHT)
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
MILAN: Ask any frequent flier to Italy about travel confusion and be prepared for epic narrations making Ulysses' travels to the peninsula seem like a stroll in the park.
Recently, complaints have targeted Italy's two principal hubs - Rome's Leonardo da Vinci airport at Fiumicino and Milan's Malpensa airport, which together account for more than 60 percent of Italy's air traffic - and in particular their baggage-handling services.
"This year has been dramatic with respect to past years," said Vincenzo Donvito, the president of ADUC, a consumers rights group. "We've had twice as many complaints." To him, the Fiumicino airport is "the hub from hell."
Telefono Blu, an advocacy group for Italian passengers, reported that over the summer it had received at least 6,000 complaints about lost or delayed luggage, nearly two-thirds of them during the peak period from July 20 to Aug. 20. Of the complaints, 21 percent referred to Fiumicino and 22 percent to Malpensa.
Just last month, the Milan hub dismissed 18 of 29 baggage handlers arrested in August 2002 after closed-circuit cameras had recorded employees breaking into suitcases in the airport's cargo area and then auctioning off pilfered goods. (The other 11 handlers had resigned.)
A spokeswoman for SEA, the company that manages the airport, said that this isolated incident involving "a handful of dishonest employees" should not reflect on Malpensa's overall efficiency, which she said received high marks in client surveys.
Baggage-handling operations have become more complicated since Jan. 1 of this year, when anti-terrorism measures went into effect requiring that all luggage be X-rayed, she said. She said that passengers on indirect flights with short transfer times were most likely to be affected.
David Henderson, the information manager at the Brussels-based Association of European Airlines, said passenger hubs were "particularly vulnerable" to baggage delays. In the association's consumer report for August, the most recent available, Alitalia, Italy's national carrier, reported a missing-baggage ratio of 46.7 per 1,000, putting it at the bottom of the 26-airline ranking. The airline with the second-worst record was KLM, with a ratio of 29.4 per 1000.
A 1999 European Union directive that was put into effect at Fiumicino and Malpensa in the summer of 2002, which required the liberalization of runway services in Italian airports - including baggage-handling operations - also seems to have had an effect, not necessarily for the better.
"Things have gotten worse," said Nives Annarumma, a spokeswoman for Air France in Rome. "All the airline companies are working with Rome Airports and the Italian Board of Airline Representatives to determine what the problem is and sort it out."
Claudio Balzarini, the president of the airline representatives' board, described problems at Fiumicino as "chronic" and blamed the airport's infrastructure.
At the international terminal, for example, the baggage-handling services are too far from the passenger terminal, aggravating inefficiencies. He said the board had kept up a steady pressure on Rome Airports, which operates both facilities, to improve the situation, but that it was "unsatisfied with results so far."
He added, "Liberalizing should have improved the service, not made it worse."
Riccardo Raimondi, the central director of aeronautical activities for Rome Airports, said that dividing runway services among three companies - ADR Handling, Alitalia Airport and EAS European Avia Service - had led to a new coordination and organization of the baggage-handling services.
Raimondi said that Rome Airports, along with an ad hoc working group, was monitoring and controlling the situation in compliance with the European Union's passenger charter, which Italy was the first to adopt. Complaints were regularly passed on to the handlers, he said, but the company could take no legal action.
By next summer, there should be a marked improvement in the situation at Fiumicino when a new installation for handling transit luggage becomes operational. But industry analysts say that in general, Italy's airports have serious deficiencies that slow many improvements.
"For years the importance of having better-quality infrastructures was underestimated, and some airports are burdened with technical difficulties like short runways," said David Jarach, a consultant and professor of air transportation marketing at the SDA Bocconi School of Business in Milan.
"But we also have to consider that in many cases the competence of managers at Italian airports had been lower than average because they were often political appointments."
Jarach said habits that developed when monopolies prevailed were hard to shake.
"This is typical of the Italian way, which makes the error of ignoring the concept of client satisfaction," he said. "A cultural revolution is necessary, but it's been slow in coming."
He added that the emergence of low-cost carriers had stimulated some competition but that an "ancien régime" attitude still prevailed.
International Herald Tribune
Complaints mushroom over airports in Milan and Rome
By Elisabetta Povoledo/IHT (IHT)
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
MILAN: Ask any frequent flier to Italy about travel confusion and be prepared for epic narrations making Ulysses' travels to the peninsula seem like a stroll in the park.
Recently, complaints have targeted Italy's two principal hubs - Rome's Leonardo da Vinci airport at Fiumicino and Milan's Malpensa airport, which together account for more than 60 percent of Italy's air traffic - and in particular their baggage-handling services.
"This year has been dramatic with respect to past years," said Vincenzo Donvito, the president of ADUC, a consumers rights group. "We've had twice as many complaints." To him, the Fiumicino airport is "the hub from hell."
Telefono Blu, an advocacy group for Italian passengers, reported that over the summer it had received at least 6,000 complaints about lost or delayed luggage, nearly two-thirds of them during the peak period from July 20 to Aug. 20. Of the complaints, 21 percent referred to Fiumicino and 22 percent to Malpensa.
Just last month, the Milan hub dismissed 18 of 29 baggage handlers arrested in August 2002 after closed-circuit cameras had recorded employees breaking into suitcases in the airport's cargo area and then auctioning off pilfered goods. (The other 11 handlers had resigned.)
A spokeswoman for SEA, the company that manages the airport, said that this isolated incident involving "a handful of dishonest employees" should not reflect on Malpensa's overall efficiency, which she said received high marks in client surveys.
Baggage-handling operations have become more complicated since Jan. 1 of this year, when anti-terrorism measures went into effect requiring that all luggage be X-rayed, she said. She said that passengers on indirect flights with short transfer times were most likely to be affected.
David Henderson, the information manager at the Brussels-based Association of European Airlines, said passenger hubs were "particularly vulnerable" to baggage delays. In the association's consumer report for August, the most recent available, Alitalia, Italy's national carrier, reported a missing-baggage ratio of 46.7 per 1,000, putting it at the bottom of the 26-airline ranking. The airline with the second-worst record was KLM, with a ratio of 29.4 per 1000.
A 1999 European Union directive that was put into effect at Fiumicino and Malpensa in the summer of 2002, which required the liberalization of runway services in Italian airports - including baggage-handling operations - also seems to have had an effect, not necessarily for the better.
"Things have gotten worse," said Nives Annarumma, a spokeswoman for Air France in Rome. "All the airline companies are working with Rome Airports and the Italian Board of Airline Representatives to determine what the problem is and sort it out."
Claudio Balzarini, the president of the airline representatives' board, described problems at Fiumicino as "chronic" and blamed the airport's infrastructure.
At the international terminal, for example, the baggage-handling services are too far from the passenger terminal, aggravating inefficiencies. He said the board had kept up a steady pressure on Rome Airports, which operates both facilities, to improve the situation, but that it was "unsatisfied with results so far."
He added, "Liberalizing should have improved the service, not made it worse."
Riccardo Raimondi, the central director of aeronautical activities for Rome Airports, said that dividing runway services among three companies - ADR Handling, Alitalia Airport and EAS European Avia Service - had led to a new coordination and organization of the baggage-handling services.
Raimondi said that Rome Airports, along with an ad hoc working group, was monitoring and controlling the situation in compliance with the European Union's passenger charter, which Italy was the first to adopt. Complaints were regularly passed on to the handlers, he said, but the company could take no legal action.
By next summer, there should be a marked improvement in the situation at Fiumicino when a new installation for handling transit luggage becomes operational. But industry analysts say that in general, Italy's airports have serious deficiencies that slow many improvements.
"For years the importance of having better-quality infrastructures was underestimated, and some airports are burdened with technical difficulties like short runways," said David Jarach, a consultant and professor of air transportation marketing at the SDA Bocconi School of Business in Milan.
"But we also have to consider that in many cases the competence of managers at Italian airports had been lower than average because they were often political appointments."
Jarach said habits that developed when monopolies prevailed were hard to shake.
"This is typical of the Italian way, which makes the error of ignoring the concept of client satisfaction," he said. "A cultural revolution is necessary, but it's been slow in coming."
He added that the emergence of low-cost carriers had stimulated some competition but that an "ancien régime" attitude still prevailed.
International Herald Tribune