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Flying sucks. This we know. And yet, somehow, airlines keep managing to find new ways to make it worse. One of most common ways airlines do this is by either losing or damaging our luggage.
I mean, it’s not like WE’RE GOING TO NEED ALL THOSE CLOTHES AND TOILETRIES WE SO PAINSTAKINGLY PACKED. Right? But I digress…
Did you know that over half a million pieces of luggage are expected to be lost, misdirected, or damaged on U.S. domestic flights during 2018’s busy travel season? Around 568,000 to be precise.
The folks over at LuggageHero, a network of luggage storage sites, do because they did an analysis of U.S. Department of Transportation figures from 2012 to April 2018 and that’s what they discovered.
So what is a air traveler to do? Well, the first thing you can do is to choose which airline you fly armed with a little knowledge. Thankfully, LuggageHero did all the leg work and figured out which airlines are the least likely to lose or damage your bags.
What they learned was that out of the 12 carriers they researched, Delta, Spirit and JetBlue ranked the highest with regard to reliable luggage handling.
On the bottom end of the spectrum in the research, Envoy Air, ExpressJet and SkyWest have had twice the baggage complaints as the best airlines since 2012.
It’s not all doom and gloom though (it just feels that way when you fly).
According to LuggageHero…
The good news is that, on average, complaints nationally have dropped overall by an impressive 27 percent since 2012. Some airlines, such as United, have improved by more than 50 percent, and no major U.S. airline is performing worse. Last September (the lowest month for lost bags, by the way), U.S. airlines chalked up the lowest monthly rate of mishandled baggage reports — 1.99 per 1,000 passengers — in 30 years.
As for what to do if and when one of these airlines does mishandle your luggage, LuggageHero also provides eight tips for handling the baggage blues. Check them out here.
