Times: BA tried to cover up being worst for losing passengers' luggage

From The Times (UK)

August 4, 2007

BA tried to cover up being worst for losing passengers' luggage
Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent

British Airways attempted to conceal how many bags it was losing after
discovering that it had come bottom of an industry league table, The
Times has learnt.

The airline contacted its trade body, the Association of European
Airlines (AEA), and ordered it not to announce the results of its
quarterly survey of baggage delays and punctuality.

The air passenger watchdog said it was outrageous for BA to try to
hide the truth from passengers and said that European legislation was
needed to force all airlines to produce monthly performance reports.

In April, May and June, BA recorded its worst missing-baggage figures
for at least five years, losing one bag for every 36 passengers
carried. Its performance was almost twice as bad as the European
industry average of one lost bag for every 63 passengers.

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So many bags accumulated at Heathrow after missing their flights that
BA hired a fleet of lorries to take them by road to Milan, where they
spent several more days being sorted. Many passengers were left
without their bags for their entire holiday and some had to wait for
more than four weeks to have their luggage returned.

The survey also showed that BA was among the worst-performing airlines
for punctuality, with almost a third of flights departing late. Only
three, much smaller, airlines of the 28 in the AEA survey scored
lower.

A senior BA manager contacted the AEA and said that the airline was
very concerned by the damage that the previous quarterly surveys had
done to its reputation. These surveys had received widespread media
coverage and had resulted in BA being criticised strongly by passenger
groups. The manager told the AEA to stop its normal practice of
issuing a press release to announce that the survey results were
available.

He also said that BA wanted the figures to be placed on an obscure
part of the AEA website, where they would be difficult to find.

An AEA source said that it felt very uncomfortable about concealing
the figures in this way, but did not want to upset such a powerful
member airline. The AEA relies heavily on BA's expertise when dealing
with the European Commission and other authorities. The AEA source
said: "BA said it did not want us to draw attention to these figures
because they were embarrassing. It was the only airline to raise this
concern."

Simon Evans, the chief executive of the Air Transport Users Council,
said: "It is outrageous and reprehensible for an airline to hide
information in this way simply because it does not compare well with
its peers. It takes away the whole integrity and transparency of the
system."

He said that the AEA had only started to publish the figures in 2003
because it realised that, if it did not reveal them voluntarily, the
European Commission would compel its members to do so. Mr Evans added:
"We and others have been calling for some time for airlines to be
required to report these figures so that they can be published in a
very public way."

A spokesman for Lufthansa, another senior AEA member, said: "We would
never seek to hide these figures. We accept that sometimes we will be
seen to do badly but you can't always have the sunny side of life."

A BA spokesman initially denied that the airline had tried to suppress
the figures. He said: "It's got nothing to do with us whatsoever." BA
later admitted it had made a complaint to the AEA about the survey
because it was incomplete. The airline claimed that some member
airlines, including Virgin Atlantic and bmi, had failed to report how
many bags they had lost.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle2195581.ece



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