in 2022 26 million pieces of luggage were lost, two out of three in Europe – Corriere.it

The summer chaos of the past year, especially in Europewith strikes, long queues at airports, delayed planes, thousands of canceled flights and ground staff shortages caused passengers to lose at least 26 million pieces of baggage worldwide. With almost eight trolleys (per thousand travellers) classified as misguided – which in jargon indicates personal effects returned late, damaged, lost or stolen – 2022 was the worst period in the last ten years. what we read in Baggage It Insights 2023, the dossier produced by the international aeronautical telecommunications company (Sita). The epicenter of the inconvenience was the Old Continent: two out of three problematic suitcases were reported right here.

After Covid

In short, the first test of the recovery of travel after the pandemic to forget. The Sita report – a company that also provides the reference platform for those trying to recover their trolley – talks about exponential growth of irregularities in baggage handling. The number of disruptions increased by 75% in one year, going from 4.35 lost, damaged or delayed bags per thousand passengers in 2021 to 7.6 in 2022 . Compared to 3.42 billion travelers (Iata data), Sita calculates at least 26 million problem bags.

The causes

Of these approx 21 million trolleys were delivered late – even days -, 1.8 million were found to be lost or stolenthe others 3.2 million were damaged or tampered with. In more detail, Sita’s document recalls that le bags in transit have always represented the majority of mishandled luggage. So much so that those who took a domestic flight recorded a criticality rate of personal effects equal to 2.4 per thousand passengers, while those who embarked on an international connection – even more so with a stopover – saw the incidence rise to 19.3. It means that every hundred passengers, on average, two trolleys have been returned late, damaged, lost or stolen.

Evolution

Since 2007 — first year of accounting provided by Sita — by 2022, against 50.3 billion passengers, there were 402.3 million mishandled bags. The worst period was 2007 with 18.9 problematic trolleys for every thousand users, a share that fell year after year to 3.5 in 2020 (but here there is also the effect of the pandemic). In 2022 it jumped precisely to 7.6, the worst value since 2012 (when it was at 8.8). After a decade of declines, it is disheartening to see mishandled baggage increasing again, explains the managing director of Sita David Lavorel in a note. As an industry, we must work hard to ensure that passengers are once again confident about checking in their bags.