NEWS | Wednesday, 26 March 2008

Air Malta ranked most reliable baggage handler

David Darmanin

Malta’s national airline Air Malta has ranked at par with Turkish Airlines as the carrier with the lowest incidence of baggage delay for 2007.
This was confirmed after the Air Transport Users Council (AUC), the consumer watchdog for the airline industry, published 2007 baggage delay figures collected from all European carriers covering domestic, intra-European and long-haul services.
“According to the airlines’ own data, an average of 16.6 bags per thousand passengers were delayed on flights operated by the major European network airlines in 2007,” AUC chairman Tina Tietjen revealed in a press statement.
Marking a slight improvement from last year’s 4.7 delayed bags per 1,000 passengers, this year Air Malta ranked first with 4.5 delayed bags per 1,000 passengers after enplaning a total of 2,107,206 passengers.
Turkish Airlines, carrying almost 20 million passengers, achieved the same reliability figures as Air Malta.
With 27.8 per thousand, TAP Air Portugal scored as the least reliable – marking a drastic increase in delayed luggage from last year’s 21 per thousand, when it ranked second after British Airways (BA).
Although slightly improving its international ranking to the second least reliable, this year BA also marked an increase in delayed luggage – standing at 26.5 per thousand this year, when compared to 23 per thousand last year.
Referring to Britain’s national airline and Heathrow’s airport operator, a spokesperson for the London-headquartered AUC said: “We have some sympathy with the problems they (BA and Heathrow Airport) encountered in 2007, particularly the increased levels of hold luggage as a result of the “one bag” rule at UK airports throughout the year. But, whatever the extenuating circumstances when passengers hand in their bag in a check-in they should expect to see their bag at the other end.”
Describing the situation as “interesting”, BA Operations Director Gareth Kirkwood remarked that at 17 delayed baggage per thousand, BMA – the other airline using Heathrow as a hub, also ranked poorly.
“Although Heathrow airport continues to suffer from a very stretched infrastructure running at almost double capacity, we also accept that on occasions our own levels of service have not been as high as we would like,” Kirkwood added.
Also blaming new restrictions on baggage allowances, the record number of overall bags transferred at Heathrow in 2007, the wetter than usual June and July and the “critical” level of airport security in England, Kirkwood expressed satisfaction with the lifting of the cabin baggage restriction in January of this year.
“We very much expect that our baggage performance will improve once we settle into our new home at Heathrow Terminal 5 which opens at the end of March,” he said.
Reiterating how delayed baggage negatively affects passengers, the AUC published two case studies to portray how this issue may result in passenger inconvenience, stress and unnecessary expense.
Describing one of the cases, the AUC said: “A married couple booked a cruise to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary. On arriving at the airport to join the cruise chip later that day, they found that both their bags had not arrived with them. They therefore joined the ship without their luggage, which contained, among other things, all their clothes including formal eveningwear and their camera. The couple had to spend £150 buying replacement items such as toiletries, t-shirts and shorts. One bag eventually turned up after five days but they did not get the other one back until after the cruise had finished. They told us that their golden wedding celebration cruise had been ruined and were bitterly disappointed that all the airline has offered them as recompense was a refund of the £150 they spent.”