International airlines operating in Nigeria recorded 18,955 cases of delayed/missing luggage in the last six months, analysis by Daily Trust indicated.
The development is causing unease for passengers; some of whom are said to be waiting endlessly before their baggage can arrive.
Many passengers have expressed frustration over the loss of their baggage in different international trips.
While some bags get missing in transit as passengers join connecting flights, others were as a result of wrong tags by airlines.
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No fewer than 26 international airlines operated 7,144 flights between January and June, 2024, according to the Executive Summary on International and Domestic Flight Operations compiled by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).
Out of these flights, 2,305 flights were delayed while 69 flights were cancelled with the airlines airlifting a total of 908,235 in-bound and 1,024, 909 outbound passengers.
Apart from the delay which characterised the flights, there were concerns over the cases of missing luggage on the flights.
While most of the baggage were found (with 17,365 of the 189,55 found), there has been an increase in the number of cases of missing/delayed flights by international airlines.
According to the NCAA data, Air France recorded the highest number of missing/delayed luggage of 2,074 with 2,014 baggage found followed by KLM with 1,938 cases with 1,871 baggage found while Royal Air Maroc recorded 1,745 cases with 1,386 of the baggage found.
Egypt Air had 1,850 cases of missing baggage in six months while 1,706 bags were found; Lufthansa recorded 1,535 and found 1,389; British Airways recorded 1,428 cases and 1,291 baggage found just as Kenya Airlines recorded 1,346 and 1,363 respectively in six months of 2024.
Delta had 1,101 cases with 1,036 baggage found; Qatar Airways recorded 980 missing luggage and 937 found; Ethiopian Airlines recorded 545 cases and found 530 baggage while United Airline recorded 407 cases of missing luggage while 383 were found.
Daily Trust reports that the high rate of missing luggage on international flights reflects the dilemma of passengers travelling from different countries.
Cases of missing luggage blamed on airlines ‘tankering up’
Sources said the high number of delayed or missing luggage is connected to the high cost and scarcity of aviation fuel (Jet A1) in Nigeria prompting most of the foreign airlines to tanker up to avoid buying fuel at destination.
Our correspondent reports that some airlines use tankering when fuel is cheaper at the departure airport than at the destination airport to reduce fuel costs.
Speaking on this, aviation analyst, Olumide Ohunayo said when an airline ‘tankers up’, it makes the aircraft heavier, making it difficult to carry much luggage on the flight.
He noted that cases of baggage delay are also experienced on local flights, recalling a recent flight to Enugu where the airline could not carry the passengers’ baggage because it had to tanker up from Lagos since there was no fuel in Enugu.
In this situation, he said the airline should ensure that the baggage should be sent directly to the address of the owner and not asking them to come to the airport.
He said, “What some of those foreign airlines do is that they are tankering up from their base to get to Lagos or Abuja and because they have tankered up, the aircraft becomes heavy and it is the luggage that would suffer and oftentimes the luggage would come after the aircraft had landed.
“So, I expect that such luggage is sent to the address of the owner, not them coming to the airport. This is something that we are not doing. They should send the luggage directly to the owner.
“The airline that has not made that luggage to come in by virtue of operational reasons should be the one that would process that baggage to get to the final destination.”
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