Unclaimed luggage piles up at London Heathrow Airport on July 8.
PAUL ELLIS/AFP via Getty Images.
US airlines have “mishandled” over 1.4 million bags since the beginning of this year.
American Airlines was ranked as having the worst mishandled baggage rate out of all US carriers.
Travelers are sharing horror stories about luggage lost amid this summer’s travel chaos.
US airlines just received their latest report card from the Department of Transportation, and the grades are bleak across the board — particularly in the baggage department.
Every US airline listed in the August Air Travel Consumer Report has “mishandled” a higher percentage of bags between January and June 2022 compared to the same period last year. Several airlines, including Delta and United, nearly tripled the total number of bags lost.
American Airlines reported a lost baggage rate of 0.93 mishandled bags per 100 enplaned, worse than any other airline on the list. That translates to 300,590 bags lost by the airline so far this year.
American was followed by Alaska Airlines, JetBlue, and United in the DOT rankings, which reported a 0.75%, 0.70%, and 0.64% mishandled baggage rate, respectively. In total, US airlines have lost over 1.4 million bags since the beginning of this year.
One American Airlines passenger told Insider’s Grace Dean that a stranger discovered her lost luggage in Hamburg more than six weeks after her fight — even though the airline doesn’t fly there and she hadn’t visited Germany.
Amid many lost luggage horror stories like these this summer, understaffed airlines and third party baggage contractors have struggled to handle pent-up travel demand.
Delta Airlines dropped down two spots from its 2021 ranking to sixth-place with a mishandled baggage rate of 0.61%. The airline mishandled 230,142 pieces of luggage between January and June 2022, compared to 69,376 during the same time period last year.
The five airlines with the lowest rate of mishandled baggage for the first half of 2022 were Allegiant Air, Hawaiian Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and Spirit Airlines, in that order.