Forum: travel.stackexchange.com
Tags: <luggage><amsterdam><ams>
Title: What is the incidence of lost luggage in Amsterdam Airport?
Question: Years ago, 10% of luggage going through Amsterdam Airport was lost.  Is that still true?  We have a choice to fly through Paris or Amsterdam to Prague on Delta.

Answers:
sents: text: According to this article the rate of bags lost in Europe is about 8 per thousand.
text: That's less than 1%.
text: It goes on to say that 85% of bags reported as missing are delivered within 48 hours.
text: Choose your layover on whatever basis you like, but lost bags shouldn't be an issue.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/105640/Arthur's Pass
score: 22
sents: text: I cannot imagine 10% of luggage ever misconnected in AMS.
text: This just seems sooooo much higher than anywhere else.
text: Moreover, it would imply that KLM as the major user of the airport would have a rate of mishandle luggage at around 10%, which would have put them in an untenable business situation.
text: More importantly, what matters is the mishandled rate now, not way back when: the rate for 2017 was 5.57 per thousands, and Delta now uses technology where they claim to handle 99.9% of all bags perfectly (as reported by the BBC here ).
text: Given that AMS is a major Delta hub, and KLM is so intertwined with Delta, it is unlikely that the DL performance is much worse than announced when connecting to a KLM flight.
text: As an aside
text: : I avoid CDG as much as I can.
text: I have always found AMS to be much more passenger friendly:
text: clean, with a logical layout, and spacious wait areas, all things which CDG is NOT.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/76330/ZeroTheHero
score: 17
sents: text: Last year I was part of the software team of sections of the baggage handling at Schiphol.
text: From the data I saw there they never reached the 10% you claim.
text: The year I was working the number of lost bags was 0.75%.
text: Which is lower than the European average of 0.8%.
text: Though that might be because of the number of significant digits.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/106967/StefanJanssen
score: 8
sents: text: From my own limited experience (fly once or twice a year, always from Amsterdam), luggage handling was very bad in the '90 but is good now.
text: On returning home i hardly ever have to wait more then 15 mins for the luggage to arrive on the belt.
text: Only once had two bags misplaced, they were sent after us on the next plane, this was about 15yrs ago.
text: It used to be in the '90
text: we had to wait for 45 mins normally and very often
text: they would forget to unload or would only unload half the suitcases.
text: Than after complaints and some more waiting the rest would come.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/3011/Ivana
score: 2
sents: text: As others have stated the loss rate you quote is probably a misquote, and these days probably irrelevant.
text: Faster connections <1h increase the risk of luggage missing the connection, but they'll send it to you on the next flight.
text: So if you're worried about late bags, pick the airport with the longer layover.
text: Or better yet, plan your flight so the connection has 2h-3h as a layover.
text: On a personal note, i agree with the comments that AMS nicer than CDG, but that is personal taste.
text: Also AMS is more in English then CDG, which is french after all.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/56542/ic_fl2
score: 2
sents: text: I think I remember from years back when there was a strike or a system failure there was a huge backlog of luggage in Schiphol, it may even have happened a few times when they were installing the current luggage system.
text: But that was years ago
text: and I have not heard about system failures for a long time.
text: If there was a 10% luggage delivery failure it was to deliver in a timely manner, all delayed luggage got send on bar for a small percentage which had lost tags.
text: It was also always short in duration, like a 24 hour strike.
text: So while there might have been a time when the 10% luggage lost was mentioned in the news, it was never a long term number.
text: Strikes can happen but are much less likely in the Netherlands than in France, so based on that alone
text: I would avoid Paris.
text: I have written this answer from memory, living near enough the airport that news like that makes the small, free, local newspapers and the local gossip.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/27650/Willeke
score: 1

Summary of the answers:
It is reported that the data shows that Amsterdam airport never reached the 10% you claim, and that in one year the number of lost bags was 0.75%.
The rate of luggage lost is far lower than 10%, last year it was 0.75%.