The BA baggage fiasco at T5 following the opening of the new terminal would seem to be a drop in the ocean as it has been announced that over 42m bags were lost worldwide in 2007, an increase of 25% in two years, according to an industry report.

The lost bags - out of a total of 2.25bn checked in - cost the airline industry $3.8bn. Two years ago 30m bags were mishandled, costing the industry $2.5bn.

SITA (who produced the report) CEO Francesco Violante said: ‘Once again, the past year has seen an increase in the amount of baggage mishandled worldwide. It also brings fresh hope, however, in the shape of new initiatives such as IATA’s Baggage Improvement Programme.

‘It is important that we continue to move towards a comprehensive, fully-integrated global baggage management system that can direct, track and trace passenger baggage throughout the entire journey from check-in to final delivery at the destination.

'Radio frequency identification (RFID) also has a role to play and could save the industry as much as $700m if it was fully implemented across the industry.’

Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s director general and CEO, added: ‘We get baggage right 98% of the time. But with a total volume of over 2.2bn bags in the system, the 2% that is mishandled is a big problem that we need to fix.’

In 2007, the single largest cause of baggage delay was in transfer baggage mishandling (49%), but this has been falling steadily since 2005 when it was at 61%. Failure to load accounted for 16% of lost bags, arrival station mishandling accounted 8% and tagging errors accounted 5%.

4/20/2008 6:49:37 AM UTC