BA: The biggest luggage losers

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- British Airways has apologized to passengers after a report revealed the airline lost more luggage than all other major European airlines last year.

BA misplaced 23 bags per 1,000 passengers carried in 2006 -- the worst figure in a list of 24 airlines who are members of the Association of European Airlines (AEA).

The UK's Air Transport Users Council (AUC), which released the figures Wednesday, said BA had told the council its performance on bags last year was unacceptable and it apologized to customers.

The AUC also detailed past cases of lost luggage and various airlines' failure to meet the desired service standards.

In one case a passenger's mobility scooter was damaged in transit and she paid £263 ($519) to have it repaired. Spending weeks coping without it, she was offered only £25 ($49) by the unnamed airline in compensation.

Another passenger's bag was lost by an airline and her claim for 116 euros ($155), in line with airline policy, and £1,500 ($2,962) for the lost items in her luggage was rejected. The airline eventually paid her £400 ($790).

The AUC and AEA baggage figures for 2006 showed that more than 5.6 million bags went missing among the 24 airlines -- an average of 15.7 bags per 1,000 passengers.

Among those airlines that had worse-than-average figures were BA, Lufthansa of Germany, Air France, Italy's Alitalia and KLM of the Netherlands (now merged with Air France).

The AEA stated 85 percent of misplaced bags were returned to passengers within 48 hours, indicating about one million items took longer than two days to reach their owners and some "never got returned at all."

The AUC also said the actual figure for European carriers could be even worse as some AEA airlines, such as Virgin Atlantic and bmi fail to provide luggage data. Also, budget airlines such as Ryanair and easyJet are not AEA members.

In response to the findings BA said: "We accept that our levels of service have not been up to an acceptable standard and we fully apologize to customers who have been affected by delayed baggage in the past year.

"The volumes of hold baggage going through Heathrow, the change in security procedures and some airport baggage system failures within Terminal 4 has not helped our performance," it continued.

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