British Airways has apologised to its customers after it emerged that the airline mishandled 23 bags per 1,000 passengers last year.

Among 24 major European airlines, which are members of the Association of European Airlines (AEA), BA had the worst record for mislaying passenger baggage. Members include Air France and Lufthansa.

According to the AEA over 5.6 million bags were mishandled by European carriers in 2006, of which 85 per cent were returned to their owners within 48 hours.

The figures were released today, and BA did not hesitate to own up. "We accept that our levels of service have not been up to an acceptable standard and we fully apologise to customers who have been affected by delayed baggage in the past year," said a spokesman.

The airline blamed the airport security alerts in August, which saw the amount of checked baggage increase by 25 per cent. In a statement BA said: "The volumes of hold baggage going through Heathrow, the change in security procedures and some airport baggage system failures within Terminal 4 has not helped our performance."

In addition BA operates at major hub airports and handles considerable amounts of passengers on connecting flights, which is when mishandling of baggage is most likely to take place. By comparison low cost airlines such as Ryanair tend to use smaller airports that handle less passengers and suffer fewer incidences of baggage congestion.

Although not a member of the AEA, Ryanair also released figures for last year, claiming to lose only one bag for every 2,000 passengers. The figure is the lowest the AEA carriers, although Ryanair did not confirm whether figures are compiled in the same way.

EasyJet has told Times Online Travel that it will not publish its mishandled baggage figures for comparison, and although they are AEA members, Virgin Atlantic and bmi have also not submitted figures.

Ryanair was among the first airlines, together with Flybe, to start charging passengers for checked-in luggage, in March 2006. By comparison BA waited until February 2007 to introduce baggage fees, and then only for carriage of a second bag, after initial plans to introduce charges in summer 2006 were scuppered by the August airport security alerts and a change in cabin baggage rules.

Speaking for the air travel watchdog, the Air Transport Users Council, chairman Tina Tietjen said: “When passengers hand over their suitcases at check-in they should be able to expect to see them the other end. Complaints to the council show that instances of mishandled baggage can cause passengers considerable stress, inconvenience and expense. They also show that passengers often struggle to get reasonable redress from airlines after the event."

In apologising to customers, BA said mishandling at Heathrow will be reduced owing to a streamlining of the baggage handling process - and in 2008 the move of more than 90 per cent of BA flights to Terminal 5 "will significantly reduce the number of connecting transfer bags which get delayed between flights in the tunnel between our current homes of Terminal 1 and Terminal 4," added the spokesman.

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