[stevicus]

Originally Posted by BKK_FLYER

Very true.. 1.5 million is a lot as a stand-alone number, but again extrapolate that, it's 1.5 million out of how many?______ millionS

That's what I'm wondering about. According to the figures, the airlines served 424 million passengers during the period in question. Since that's a number far exceeding the entire population of the United States, I wonder if they're just counting up the number of passengers on every single flight.

So, if I'm flying from New York to Tucson with 1 or more connecting flights, then I would conceivably be listed as a passenger on 2 or more different planes in the same one-way trip. If they lose my baggage, I assume that they only count it once and not reflect that it was on a trip involving two or more flights.

To illustrate what I mean, let's say you have 1000 passengers all going from LGA to TUS with a connection in ORD. Let's say, of that number, only 3 passengers lose their luggage (reflected in the provided stats). But each passenger is taking two separate planes in the same trip, so the stats would also reflect 2000 passengers, since the stats obviously encompass all passengers on all flights counted.

So, this might have the effect of misleadingly make the airlines service record look better than it really is. In the above example, it would be more accurate to state that 6 "enplaned passengers" lost their luggage instead of just 3, since they were on two separate flights which would have been both counted in tallying up the number of "enplaned passengers."

I'd agree with this. It would give a more accurate picture. But I suspect that it would be a somewhat logistical nightmare to drill-down to this data level.

Sure the majority of people would be easy to tally-- those who checked a bag at the main counters at their origins.. but to fair and accurate, you should also include those who checked (or were forced to) a bag plane-side. Many of these bags use manually written 'tags' issued plane-side may not ever get entered into the passengers reservations data...

My only issue here is if we're going to change how the data is collected, I think that the data needs to be collected in a manner that's fair, unbiased and actually shows the complete picture, whatever it may be.

Well, it could be done by just tallying the actual number of bags they actually check and compare that with the reports of mishandled luggage. Rather than comparing it to the total number of passengers (which can be slightly misleading), just tally up how many bags they check versus the number of bags reported as mishandled.

Since the checked baggage is tagged with their own code numbers and entered into their computer system, surely the airlines would know how many pieces of luggage they're carrying. Compare the total number of bags carried versus number of bags reported as mishandled, and I think you'd end up with a more accurate representation of how well they're doing.

So, perhaps the best way to do it would be to just compare total number of bags handled versus number of bags mishandled, and take the number of passengers completely out of the equation. Just count the bags.

Maybe.. maybe not.. To me, to make this claim on an objective level, you'd need to go back and take a reasonable data sampling from time periods before bag fees were introduced and an equal data sampling from time periods after the fees were introduced and compare like-to-like data.

My guess is that they're doing it just because they can. Realizing that they're facing higher fuel costs and other economic pressures, they introduce fees to compensate for that, whether it's charging for bags, meal service, earphones, etc. I remember one airline even considered charging people to use the restrooms, but there was such an outcry that they backed off from that.

But the underlying message they're sending is still clear: The only thing your "airfare" will buy you is a seat on a plane going to the destination you paid for. Whatever extras might have been part of the package before are falling by the wayside. They're saying "These are the things we don't really want to do and don't really consider part of our basic service, but we will do it for an extra fee."

I think they already contract out for food service, since it's cheaper to have another company do it than to hire their own employees to do it. They could do that with baggage handling as well if it's really that much trouble for them.