Airline association scraps baggage league table
03.07.10
The Association of European Airlines has stopped publishing details of ‘service quality’, in which 30 European scheduled airlines were compared against each other, the Telegraph reports. The airlines regarded the tables as bad for the image of the industry and several lobbied for their publication to cease. Consumer groups have condemned the decision to scrap the tables, which they said made airlines more accountable to their passengers.
David Henderson, the AEA’s information manager, told the newspaper: ‘There was a great deal of unhappiness because of a number of factors. On occasions the details were leaked, which caused us no end of grief. There was also a sense among our members that we were paying too much attention on baggage performance and not on things that are considered far more important.’
However, Simon Evans, chief executive of passenger group the Air Transport Users Council, told the newspaper: ‘The disappearance of the tables is a bad thing because it provided an incentive for airlines to do better. Mishandled baggage remains a big issue for passengers and we don’t buy the argument that just because a small percentage of cases go missing it is an insignificant amount. Even though passengers and their baggage were often eventually reunited, airlines’ failure to deliver both to the same airport at the same time has wrecked thousands of holidays.'
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