Baggage Report

2013

THE Baggage report

AIR TRANSPORT INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

In association with

PREFACE

SITA’s ninth annual Baggage Report shows a continued improvement in the baggage mishandling rates of the industry. The headline figure has now dropped to 8.83 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers, down from 8.99 in 2011 and represents a drop of 44.5% in the number of mishandled bags in the last six years. Remarkably, given the nearly three billion passengers using the air transport system last year, it means that for every hundred passengers traveling fewer than one bag was reported as mishandled. For the industry it translates into an annual cost saving of US$2.1 billion for 2012. We are now seeing the rewards of a concerted collaborative effort to improve the baggage handling operations of the industry and in so doing reducing a major cause of passenger dissatisfaction. Delayed baggage, which was responsible for 82.9% of mishandling, fell 2.4% in 2012 to 5.67 per thousand passengers. The major cause of delayed bags is the transfer between flights which historically has proved to be a critical pinch point in the process. The good news is that we are moving in the right direction with mishandled transfer baggage falling to 48% of delayed baggage from 53% in 2011. For the first time we have taken a look at baggage performance across the world’s top 100 airports by region. Asia, in particular, stands out as performing very well with 1.93 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers. Looking at the long term trend of airline baggage performance, the improvement is significant across regions, with a mishandling bag rate reduced by 43% in Asia, 56% in North America and 43% in Europe over the last six years. Looking forward, there will be no let up in the pressure on baggage handling operations. Passenger numbers continue to grow, even in these times of reduced economic activity. There will also be no let up in industry efforts to reduce the mishandling rates. At SITA we are...