Air travel is incredible. Seriously, we sometimes forget how incredible it is that we can fly through the air in a metal tube, and hours later, we’re in an entirely different hemisphere. It’s incredible.
It’s also a frustrating experience. As amazing as it is to fly through the sky, it is occasionally marred by the tiny headaches along the way. Long lines for security as everyone removes belts and shoes. Spending 15 minutes with someone at TSA because you forgot that there’s a bottle of water in your backpack. The worst of these little setbacks is likely when the airline loses your bags. If the specter of lost luggage influences the airline you choose, Luggage Hero has a study for you. It has pulled together data to reveal the airlines that lose luggage the most and least frequently.
In the last six months of 2021 alone, more than 1.25 million bags were lost or mishandled, according to Luggage Hero’s report. That’s a lot of bags. Though, the report also says that there were more than 220 million checked bags over that six-month period. So, it might not be as bad as that sounds. That’s less than 1% of bags that pass through American airports.
The chart below ranks airlines based on the total number of mishandled bags per 1,000 checked bags over the last six months of 2021. That’s a period when air travel picked up significantly compared to the first six months of the year.
Thrillist TV
History of
The History of Tailgating
The study found that, for the fourth straight year, Allegiant Air was the airline least likely to lose your bags. It lost about 1.25 bags per 1,000 handled. At the other end of the chart, Envoy Air was the worst, closely followed by American Airlines. Those airlines lost or mishandled 9.04 and 8.62 bags per 1,000 handled, respectively.
The full list has some interesting insights, especially if you would have assumed the worst airlines by this metric would be budget airlines. Frontier Airlines ranked third best and Spirit is hovering right around the middle.
Dustin Nelson is a Senior Staff Writer at Thrillist. Follow Dustin Nelson on Twitter.
