Air Malta places last and wins accolades

Sometimes it's good to be bottom of the list.

Air Malta has placed at the bottom of a table compiled by the Association of European Airlines on carriers that lose the highest number of passenger luggage.

Topping the list, and hence performing the worst, was British Airways with 23 pieces of luggage lost for every 1,000 passengers. Air Malta's average was 4.4 bags per 1,000 passengers.

The British flag carrier's poor performance was the subject of a feature throughout yesterday on Britain's Sky News. Air Malta was given no mention.

The list features 24 airlines that supply statistics to the AEA and does not feature major carriers such as Ryanair and EasyJet.

Closely following British Airways was TAP Air Portugal, Lufthansa, Air France, Alitalia and KLM.

The Air Transport Users' Council highlighted the statistics in a report, saying that the 24 AEA airlines mishandled 5.6 million bags last year. About 85 per cent were returned to their owners within two days but a million bags took longer to be returned, or were never returned at all.

The council observed that, with the exception of TAP Air Portugal, the worst performers tended to be the larger airlines that operate networks of services from large airports where many of their passengers take connecting flights.

Research by SITA, the leading air transport communications and IT solutions provider, appeared to confirm this, recording that 61 per cent of instances of mishandled baggage were for connecting passengers.

Geoff Want, director of operations at British Airways, defended his airline, pointing out that the number of bags per month handled at Heathrow had gone up by 25 per cent since the change in UK security regimes last August and this reflected in higher numbers of delayed bags in the second half of the year compared with the first half of 2006.

The council noted that while the Montreal Convention said that an airline must accept liability for passengers' baggage, it limited the airlines' liability to £800 per passenger and an airline would need to be convinced that a lost suitcase really did contain what the passenger said it did.

"But what about the money we have to spend while we wait for the airline to acknowledge that a suitcase is lost? (The Montreal Convention says it should be considered to be lost after 21 days.) And if the bag is only delayed for a couple of days, what do we do if the airline says we spent more money while we waited than we needed to?"

The council said that although there was nothing passengers could do to make sure their bag was loaded onto the right aircraft, or that nothing averse happened to it en route to its destination, there were a number of things they could do to minimise the potential for baggage problems.

It recommended that passengers buy strong, good quality bags (not necessarily designer labels); be sure not to over-pack bags, such that they burst open; remember not to pack valuables but to carry them as hand luggage if security regulations allow it; lock the bags; fix a label with contact details to the bag and also put contact details clearly visible inside the bag; get travel insurance and check that it covers personal luggage while in the care of an airline.