BA bottom of lost bags league table
01.05.08
One in every 34 British Airways passengers suffered a lost bag so far this year, as the Heathrow Terminal 5 chaos saw the airline drop to bottom place in a ‘league table’ of European airline performance. More than a quarter of a million BA customers were victims of lost bags in the first three months of 2008 - a rate higher than any other airline and nearly double the average rate across all European airlines.
BA finished bottom out of 28 airlines after losing 28.9 bags per 1000 - a total of 270,106 bags - over the first quarter of this year, down from 22.4 bags per 1000 customers in the last quarter of 2007. The nearest contender in the latest survey by the Association of European Airlines was fellow Heathrow airline bmi, which lost 22 bags per 1000 travellers.
BA said the shocking performance was caused by a number of factors, including the disastrous T5 launch, the crash of a BA Boeing 777 at Heathrow in January and problems with the Terminal 4 baggage system.
A spokesman for the airline placed the blame for some of its poor performance on Heathrow's creaking infrastructure. He said: 'It is interesting to note that the worst two carriers in terms of baggage performance are the two biggest carriers at Heathrow airport. We believe that once our operations at Terminal 5 settle in during the next few months, that our levels of punctuality and baggage performance will begin to improve.'
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