Air India Tops Global Ranking With One Lost Luggage Per 36 Passengers, Says Report

Following Air India in the ranking are West Jet Airlines and Aer Lingus. British Airways, the UK’s national carrier, occupies the fourth position with 72,594 lost bags reported in the last 30 days

Air India has received the unfortunate title of having the highest incidence of lost passenger luggage among global airlines, as per a ranking compiled by LuggageLosers.com. Developed by Pieter Levels, LuggageLosers.com assesses airlines based on the number of lost bags. Levels launched this initiative after his girlfriend's luggage went missing two weeks ago on Spanish low-cost carrier Vueling and has yet to be recovered. According to the website, Air India reported 50,001 lost bags in the last month alone. This equates to approximately one out of every 36 passengers flying with Air India arriving without their luggage.

Following Air India in the ranking are West Jet Airlines and Aer Lingus. British Airways, the UK’s national carrier, occupies the fourth position with 72,594 lost bags reported in the last 30 days. Vueling, which prompted the creation of LuggageLosers.com, is ninth, with 17,219 lost bags over the same period. When the website launched on June 30, Vueling held the eighth position.

Levels expressed his frustration on social media, stating, “I made this because Vueling lost my gf's suitcase 2 weeks ago and still haven't returned it. Realizing if I had a site like this I'd never book Vueling in the first place as it's #8 worst in losing luggage right now!”

In addition to Air India, India also leads globally in terms of airlines with the highest number of lost luggage incidents. According to the report, airlines in India lose approximately one out of every 72 pieces of luggage.

According to Levels, the website uses "robot scrapers scour the internet 24/7 for people talking about their lost luggage and which airlines they flew, in 100+ different languages. By cross referencing that with actual lost luggage data, it estimates very closely how much luggage is constantly being lost. And yes, it takes into account airline size differences by flights and fleet size. All major airlines are tracked 24/7.”

He also pointed out the drawbacks of ranking airlines based on lost luggage incidents. He noted, "Airlines don't publish live lost luggage data (probably for a reason). Using social media as a data source has limitations but seems to be a good proxy indicator when combined with historical lost luggage data. Probabilities and lost bags are live estimations."