AEA CONSUMER REPORT FOR 4th QUARTER AND ANNUAL 2007
The Association of European Airlines has issued the latest Consumer Report, covering its members’ punctuality and baggage delivery performance for October-December and the year 2007. Twenty-eight AEA member airlines have provided punctuality data, and twenty-six contributed baggage figures. The data tables can be accessed here.
For the year as a whole, the number of bags delayed per 1000 passengers was 16.6, slightly higher than the previous year’s figure of 15.7. Most of the deterioration occurred in the second-quarter of the year when a number of well-publicised problems affected transfer baggage systems at several airports, a situation which recurred in December. For details, please consult the ‘Timeline of events’ which follows the data tables.
2007 also saw a marginal decline in punctuality; on intra-European services, 78.9% of departures were within 15 minutes of schedule, compared with 79.4% in 2006.
The statistics are not unconnected, A transfer passenger connecting at one of Europe’s network hubs, whose inbound flight is slightly delayed, can expect that every effort will be made to ensure he catches his onbound flight. As a rule, airport baggage systems do not have the same propensity for expedited transfer. AEA notes that the great majority of missing bags are traced and delivered to their owners with a minimum of delay.
The report is based upon a voluntary commitment by the members of the Association to provide consumer information according to a set of commonly defined standards. Any similar statistics reported by airlines who are not part of the AEA Consumer Report should not, under any circumstances, be construed as representing a fair comparison with the figures presented herein. AEA cannot guarantee the accuracy of such figures and indeed has reason to believe that they may represent entirely different performance criteria.