Lost luggage statistics: how much airline baggage is mishandled, lost or stolen each year

Every year the airline industry moves billions of checked bags — and mishandles millions of them, which is why so many travellers want to know how much luggage is lost for good. The reassuring part of the lost luggage statistics is that the numbers have been falling for over a decade, even as passenger traffic climbs.

The lost luggage statistics for 2018 show airlines and airports mishandled about 24.8 million bags out of roughly 4.27 billion checked in that year — a rate of 5.69 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers, and one of the lowest counts of bags lost per year on record. Set against 2007, when 46.9 million bags were mishandled, the industry has roughly halved the number of bags mishandled per year while carrying far more travellers.

The cost is still substantial — well over a billion dollars of baggage lost or delayed each year, even after a decade of improvement. SITA put the price of mishandled baggage to the air transport industry at about US$2.4 billion in 2018, down from US$4.22 billion in 2007. So while "how much luggage is lost" is the question travellers ask, the more accurate framing is how much is temporarily mislaid — and how rarely a bag is gone for good.

What the lost luggage statistics actually mean

"Mishandled" is a broad category, and lumping it together is what makes airline baggage lost statistics sound scarier than they are. The overwhelming majority of mishandled bags are simply delayed — they miss a tight connection or fail to load, and catch up with the traveller within a day or two. A smaller number are damaged, and only a small residual share are ever declared permanently lost or stolen.

Why airline bags go astray

The airline baggage lost statistics point to a clear main culprit. Transfer bags — luggage moving between connecting flights — accounted for about 47% of all mishandling, by far the largest single cause. Failure to load a bag onto its aircraft made up roughly 16%, with ticketing errors, bag switches, security removals and other causes making up the remainder.

Transfer bags are the weak link: nearly half of all mishandled luggage is lost in the hand-off between one flight and the next.

Why the number of bags mishandled per year keeps falling

The steady decline in lost luggage statistics is largely a technology story. End-to-end electronic bag tracking, driven by the industry's IATA Resolution 753 mandate, means each bag is scanned at more points in its journey — so misroutes are caught and corrected faster. That is how the industry has cut mishandled-bag numbers even as passenger volumes rose past four billion a year. Even so, that still adds up to well over a billion dollars of baggage lost or stolen worldwide, a reminder that the improvement is relative, not absolute.

How much you can do to cut the odds of a lost bag

• Avoid tight connections where possible — transfers are where most bags go missing.
• Use a tracked tag (such as an AirTag) so you can see where your bag actually is.
• Photograph your bag and its contents before you fly, to speed up any claim.
• Remove old routing tags, and label the bag clearly inside and out.

Frequently asked questions