Lost luggage costs airlines and airports
[18th April 2008]
More than 42 million items of baggage were mishandled or delayed in 2007, an increase of 25% on the previous year, costing airlines and airports an estimated $3.8 billion.
The figures come from the 4th annual SITA Baggage Report, compiled by specialist baggage tracking company SITA whose technology is used by 400 airlines and ground handling companies around the world.
The biggest cause of baggage delays was baggage being mishandled when passengers transferred flights. However, this fell from 61% in 2005 to 49% in 2007. Next major cause was failure to load baggage at 16%, followed by ticketing error, passenger bag switch, security and 'other' which together accounted for 14% of the total. Loading/offloading errors at 5% and tagging errors at 3% were a surprisingly insignificant cause of baggage delays.
Launching the report SITA CEO, Francesco Viloante, comments: “It is important that we continue to move towards a comprehensive, fully-integrated global baggage management system that can direct, track and trace passenger baggage throughout the entire journey from check in to final delivery at the destination. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) also has a role to play and could save the industry as much as $700 million if it was fully implemented across the industry”.
Director general and CEO of IATA (International Air Transport Association), Giovanni Bisignani, responds: “We get baggage right 98% of the time. But with a total volume of over 2.2 billion bags in the system, the 2% that is mis-handled is a big problem that we need to fix. IATA has developed a toolkit of 40 solutions designed to address the prime causes of baggage mishandling.
Meanwhile, some of the bags that were sent to Milan for sorting following the failure of the baggage handling system during the shambolic opening of Heathrow Terminal 5 are on their way back to the UK. British Airways apparently failed to reunite the bags with their owners during the time they were overseas.
Written by: Nick Purdom