There were over 1.6 million cases of mishandled baggage reported in the first nine months of this year alone. That's a lot of missing, damaged, delayed, or pilfered luggage. Here are the US airlines that have luggage mishaps the most often.
The U.S. Department of Transportation has released it's Air Travel Consumer Report for 2014 and there is a lot of data, including the US airlines with the worst track records for mishandling your baggage. As mentioned before, mishandled baggage means a report was filed for luggage that had been lost, damaged, delayed, or pilfered. Here are the five worst offenders from January 2014 to September 2014:
Envoy Air (formerly American Eagle): 8.82 reports per 1,000 passengers.
ExpressJet Airlines: 5.82 reports per 1,000 passengers.
SkyWest Airlines: 4.78 reports per 1,000 passengers.
Southwest Airlines: 4.31 reports per 1,000 passengers.
American Airlines: 3.76 reports per 1,000 passengers.
These numbers might not seem terribly high, but the U.S. DOT compares the mishandled luggage to the number of all enplaned passengers, not the number of passengers that actually checked baggage. A lot of people fly with only carry-ons, so it's hard to say how high the numbers really are. The airlines that did the best include JetBlue airways, Frontier Airlines, and Virgin America had less than one report per 1,000 passengers.
Every airline has it's ups and downs, but knowing ahead of time what airlines struggle with the most is only helpful to your travel research. You can read the full consumer report at the link below.
Air Travel Consumer Report | U.S. Department of Transportation via The Washington Post