BA tops lost baggage league table

[Runway 31]

Taken from today's Guardian


British airlines are the worst in Europe for losing passengers' bags, figures reveal this week. The Association of European Airlines ranks British Airways in joint last place out of its 26 members for the month of May - below airlines from countries like Romania, Hungary and Turkey. Numbers for the first five months of this year show BA lost 16 bags for every 1,000 passengers, with BMI not far behind in fourth worst place with 14.9 bags lost per 1,000 passengers.
A BA spokesman said: "May was not a good month for us, thanks to the air traffic control failure and knock-on effects. And not every airline has the same constraints as we do, working at Heathrow, the busiest airport in the world. But we can do better, and are working hard to improve."

The two British airlines scored mid-table positions for punctuality.

Who is at fault, the airlines or the airport and is it right that BA seem to lay the blame at Heathrow?.

[amanoffewwords]

The question is: do they carry as many passengers as all the other airlines in the list or have the loads been taken into account when compiling the statistics. It's like their complaints - I read an article once that said they attract the most complaints of all UK airlines. Asnwer from BA: we carry more pax compared to other UK airlines hence pro-rata we get more complaints. Take statistics with a pinch of salt, basically.

My 2p slf opinion anyway,

amofw

[Runway 31]

I would imagine that the number of passengers carried is taken into account as the figures are per 1000 carried.

[amanoffewwords]

Granted that, guess what I mean is that if we consider the task of managing the luggage as a 'problem' then the solution to that problem is that much more complex to resolve than it would be for a 'smaller' carrier with, perhaps, fewer but larger aircraft (such as Virgin) or maybe Easyjet with a large number of aircraft but maybe (not sure on this) fewer items of luggage to handle (and in smaller airports).

That's an IT perspetive of the issue anyway,

cheers
amowf

[Final 3 Greens]

BA do a lot of interlining, that's bound to up the figures.

They've never lost my bags or even delivered them late, whereas Lufthansa did last year and easyJet in 2000.

[bealine]

I must say it's a bit rich blaming Heathrow when our management make no secret of the fact that's where they would like all our flights to end up!!!

We never had chaos like this when LHR and LGW were joint hubs!

[The_Banking_Scot]

Hi,

BA have failed totransfer my bags at Helthrow twice in the past couple of months.

On July 4th had a 3 hour connection from arriving at LHR T4 form YYZ ( Club) before my EDI flight- at EDI no bags. They did come the next day ( about 30 hours dealy).

In May having come off a Club Europe flight from MUC my bags failed to connect to the EDI fight ( originally a 2 hour connection but dur to a 90 min delay at MUC ended up with around 35 min) so this was more excuseable. Again the bags were delivered around 30 hours later.

Last december I flew EDI-FRA-MUC on LH due to a delay at EDI the 55min connection at FRA became 20min ( I made the flight but my case did not). LH did get the bag to me at the MUC Hilton that afternoon.


I have had numerous VS/bmi flight connections with NO delayed bags.

These things happen but are annoying esp with the 3 hour connection time between BA flights.


Regards

TBS

[Young Paul]

Have a think about this. It is a (relative) piece of cake to transfer bags on a point-to-point flight. Take Ryanair, for instance. It is flying from (say) Hahn airport, where there are a handful of flights a day, and FR are the biggest operator. So any bags will probably be going to FR, there isn't a great deal of space in which they can get lost, so the bags are almost certain to end up on the flight to STN. Once they are at STN, it is a bigger airport, but all bags are either leaving or arriving, and if it is tagged for STN, then it will end up at the arrivals hall. Same goes for charter flights. The other European carriers don't have the level of interlining that BA and bmi do - though I would guess that KLM, AF and Lufthansa, all else being equal, would tend to come out not so well.

For Easyjet, operating between large airports, but still only point to point, again at least all bags will be leaving or arriving, so they are either going to an aircraft or to arrivals.

Where the rubber really hits the road is when you have connecting flights - with different carriers, on different sorts of routes, between large hubs. The potential for a bag to be missing and difficult to track down is huge.

bmi "lost" my bags when I flew from IAD to LHR via MAN, and they both turned up at our house in taxis within 24 hours of us getting home. A nuisance, but not much more. But think about the journey they had to make .... from checkin at IAD to the aircraft; from the aircraft at MAN to a transfer hall and thence to the domestic aircraft; and then to the belt at LHR. It is hard enough for most passengers to find their way - and they have a brain attached (kind of!).

I've not seen the statistics, but based on this analysis, my hunch is that FR would be best on this table, EZ would be next and BA/bmi worst. And I bet a high proportion of their "lost" bags are through connections. If the BA/bmi rate is around 15 per 1000, then I would expect EZ to be around 8 per 1000, and FR to be around 5. Is this anywhere near right?

An interesting fact: the notional standard weight for a bag on an intercontinental flight is 15kg. On a domestic flight, it's 11 kg. So what is supposed to happen to that 4kg when a bag is transferred from the intercontinental flight to the domestic flight? :uhoh: ITWSBT!

[Runway 31]

From what I can find out the various lost baggage complaints in June are as follows>

each per 1,000 passengers

Ryanair 0.64
Alitalia 11.4
SAS 12.1
Austrian 12.4
Air France 12.5
Lufthansa 13.8
British Airways 13.8

[Hotel Mode]

Per 1000 pax skews the figures too, it should be per 1000 checked bags. Ryanairs pax are actively discouraged from checking luggage. Also suspect a lack of recording at some of their quieter destinations?

[MarkD]

Non-interlining carriers *especially* those LCCs who won't transfer bags between their own flights such as FR should not be listed in the same table, and the number should be per 000 bags not pax.

[Globaliser]

bealine: We never had chaos like this when LHR and LGW were joint hubs!Anecdotes are always dangerous, but the first time BA misconnected a bag of mine was on an MCO-LGW/LHR-HKG online transfer. And the station manager at HKG (who was quite forthcoming with comment because they've watched me grow up from when I was at boarding school) volunteered that they had no trouble like trouble with LGW-LHR transfers.

I know that problem's now been "solved" for security reasons, but the past was not always rosier.

[The SSK]

With the exception of Ryanair, the figures quoted by Runway 31 are published by the Association of European Airlines (AEA).

Ryanair then stick their own figure on the top of the list. Nobody knows how they measure their lost baggage rate but it is obviously different from the network airlines, even allowing for hub transfers.

One explanation I have heard is that the Ryanair figure refers to bags which are never found, whereas the AEA figures are for the number of baggage irregularity reports which are filled out - in the vast majority of cases the bags are reunited with their owners within 24 hours.

[skydriller]

I find it really hard to believe these figures, my experience tells me that changing at Paris CDG with Air France is the worst airport in Europe for losing baggage,whatever the destination, and when I talk to other pax they agree!!

Globaliser - The LGW - LHR thing is now solved for me because I refuse to do that switch, and will fly virtually anywhere else to avoid it, including CDG :eek: , because its such a :mad: :mad: pain in the ar:mad: e!

Regards, SD..

PS the only time BA lost anything of mine was on a trip Aberdeen - Bordeaux via LGW, they managed to lose my Surfboard...on reporting to the Lost luggage that my surfboard had failed to arrive I was asked 'can you describe your baggage, indicate which picture best resembles it'....err... its a surfboard?, like I just said.....:hmm: :\