Study finds why lost airline bags vanish
Wonder why your lost airline bags are missing? More than half of the time it happens during aircraft transfers, according to a new study.
The moral: avoid airline transfers.
The good news is that the study shows a drop off in the number of lost airline bags.
The SITA study found the second biggest cause of loss was a failure to load the luggage, followed by ticketing errors and security issues.
The SITA 2010 Baggage Report reports a drop of 23.8 percent in the number of air passengers’ bags mishandled last year. That led to a savings of $460 million for the world’s airlines, the company says.
This is the second consecutive year that the industry has brought down significantly the number of bags mishandled worldwide, according to SITA.
“While the vast majority of mishandled bags are restored to their owners within 48 hours or less, just 3.4 percent of all 25.025 million mishandled bags go either unclaimed or, in rare instances, are actually stolen,” the site found.
Some of the improvement came about because of fewer passengers, according to SITA CEO Francesco Violante, adding:
“Improvements in baggage handling systems and passengers checking in fewer bags to avoid extra fees have also contributed to the overall decline.”
SITA, the aviation IT specialist, operates WorldTracer, a fully-automated system for tracing mishandled passenger baggage used by more than 440 airlines and ground-handling companies worldwide.
By David Wilkening
David
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