Particularly annoying

European airports often lose luggage

Luggage goes missing particularly often at European airports.

(Bild: thinkstockphotos.de, krone.at-Grafik)

A particularly annoying and unwanted travel adventure has to be endured relatively often in Europe. This is because air passengers are particularly worried about their checked baggage at airports here. 

In 2023, an average of 10.6 pieces of baggage per 1,000 passengers were lost, damaged or arrived late on the continent. This is according to data from the air traffic service provider Sita, which the portal Airhelp refers to.

Asia airports best
According to Sita, there were far fewer baggage problems in the other two traffic regions observed: In Asia there were only three incidents per 1,000 passengers and in North America 5.8 cases. Globally, this results in an average of 6.9 cases per 1,000 passengers.

A good 36 million pieces of baggage affected worldwide
According to Sita, the most common reason for baggage mishaps is errors when transferring baggage from one aircraft to another, accounting for 46 percent of all cases. Only one in 20 pieces of baggage initially reported as missing remained permanently missing, 77% arrived at their destination late and 18% were damaged.

In absolute figures, there were problems with 10.6 million pieces of luggage in Europe in 2023. Worldwide, there were 36.1 million pieces of baggage. According to the Sita report, there was a higher figure in 2008 with 36.9 million pieces of luggage missing. At that time, however, there were not half as many people traveling by plane (2.48 billion passengers) as in 2023 (5.2 billion). Luggage security has therefore improved in the long term.