The State of the World's Lost Luggage
Skift Take
Airlines and airports are improving baggage handling considerably, and no surprise with the dollars airlines stand to gain by ensuring we get our bags every time. But the promise of bags updating owners of their status along the journey is most promising. At least then, in the unlikely event your luggage decides to visit Lima, you can rest easy in Louisiana until it arrives.
It's that time of year again when SITA updates us on the industry's progress losing less (we hope) of our luggage. The results of SITA's WorldTracer data for 2015 are good, but news on progress to eliminate baggage headaches in the future is better.
The total number of mishandled bags has been reduced by almost 5% — 23.1 million, compared to 24.3 million, in 2014.
That's 6.53 bags per thousand passengers — 10.5% less per thousand passengers than last year. It's also a historic low in baggage mishandling since SITA launched its baggage handling trends reports in 2003.
Missing bags cost the industry $2.3 billion in 2015, which is 3.75% less than 2014, but still a bundle of money.
By passenger, the cost of lost or missing luggage has dropped 9.7% to $0.65, also an all-time low. But, with IATA reporting that airlines made an global average profit of $5.42 per passenger in 2014, every penny counts.
Over the past few years, the industry has improved considerably in baggage handling. Back in 2007 the number of mishandled bags reached a peak of 46.9 million, which cost the industry $4.2 billion. But the number of lost bags has been cut by half over the last nine years and associated costs has been reduced by 45%.
Self-Help
Passengers are doing their part to improve the baggage handling process, by helping themselves to baggage drop solutions. But some parts of the world are more keen to ad
