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As discussed here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/main.jhtml?xml=/travel/2007/08/04/et-BA-lost-luggage-104.xml
Who knows if they are worse than other airlines, but I see little reason to fly large sums to fly them in comparison to lower-cost carriers.
British Airways discards bags
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It also appears that up to 10 air passengers lose their bags on every BA flight <http://tinyurl.com/332z39>.
Do you need another reason to switch air carriers?
I changed carriers around 2005. BA just got from bad to worse!!! Service and everything was going down hill....
Remember the strike the one summer by their ground staff? That was a mess!!! Was stuck at LHR for the better part of two days, with no answer as to when our flight would depart. Long story.....AWFUL!!!
I fly BA over any US carrier any day, regardless of what BA do with unclaimed lost luggage; like the other carriers don't do the same thing.
No other carrier is perfect, but BA seems to be doing among the worst of all when it comes to luggage.
Odin,
you can believe what you want but statistics don't lie.
In 2006 BA lost 23 bags per 1000 passengers.
The average for all the other major European airlines was 15.7 bags per 1000.
Average for US based irlines was 6.73 bags per 1000 passengers.
I say your luggage has a better shot at making it to the destination with US based airlines. YMMV.
http://www.londonlogue.com/public-transport/british-airways-top-airline-for-lost-luggage.html
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/columnist/mcgee/2007-04-26-mcgee-packing-tips_N.htm
One of the other reports on the Torygraph website talks about the bags sent to auction because the owner cannot be found - there's a few of hundred per week which suggests that BA is getting very good at returning lost luggage
BA doesn't have available staff to find/contact owners of lost luggage so they are finding the easy way out of the mess.
" BA doesn't have available staff to find/contact owners of lost luggage so they are finding the easy way out of the mess."
That's nonsense. The auction of unclaimed bags has been common for years. It's just that in the current climate, it makes for a good headline.
It cannot be excused though that the amount of misconnecting bags at LHR is currently unacceptable. Whether some of the fault is that of BAA is irrelevant - if is affecting BA and it desperately needs to get on top of the situation. Somebody at BA is failing in their duties and needs to be sacked.
I saw statistics for American carriers and was shocked at how good they actually were. The transfer hub pretty much dominates America and given some airports like that dump MIA and bloated ORD perform quite well is surprising. I suspect that even PHL beats LHR. Clearly, they are doing something right, or at least right-er than BA/LHR.
BlueSea - BA MUST be returning lost bags to customers as otherwise it would be thousands of bags and per week.
If it's 300 bags a week for a company that flies millions of people a year then they must have staff to trace the owners of bags
Obviously the 'orphan' bags were without internal ids or external ones. Tags and such can be torn off while in mechanical transit...Are BA travellers less knowledgeable about these matters?
Look, I know we all love to hate the airlines, and to hate some airlines in particular, but it is meaningless to compare one airline to another in terms of baggage loss unless all the airlines included in the survey are subject to similar conditions. If we restrict the comparison only to bags lost by airlines on the same routes and using the same airports, then it's a valid comparison. Otherwise there are simply too many variables, making it impossible to conclude just what needs to change in order that BA's baggage handling record be improved, let alone in whose control and responsibility that change lies.
It is a reasonable assumption that BA uses LHR more than other airlines, for example. This isn't an exactly insignificant detail. Nor for that matter is it insignificant as to how many connecting passengers are flown, and the logistical details of those connections.
At the very least, I'd like to see BA's bag statistics on all their flights not going through LHR before drawing any conclusions. (Consider how silly the claim would be that since - for example - traffic jams are worse in London than in Back-of-Beyond, Minnesota - the London traffic authorities must be incompetent. Well, maybe they are - or aren't - but you can't tell this on the basis of that kind of squewed analysis.)