American Airlines recorded the highest first-half 2026 mishandling rate among reporting operating carriers, while Allegiant posted the lowest as the industry-wide rate fell year on year.
US DOT data show reporting operating carriers mishandled 1.05 million checked bags in the first half of 2026, although the overall rate improved year on year.
- US reporting operating carriers mishandled 1,052,493 checked bags from 213,072,877 enplaned between January and June 2026.
- The overall mishandling rate improved to 0.49 per 100 bags from 0.52 a year earlier, while American Airlines recorded the highest individual rate in the supplied high-to-low analysis at 0.73.
- Allegiant Air had the lowest first-half rate at 0.12 per 100 bags, followed by JetBlue at 0.31 and Southwest at 0.32.
- Travel expert Jürgen Himmelmann recommends photographing luggage and contents, removing old baggage labels, placing contact details inside the case and keeping essentials in carry-on baggage.
(NEWS) WASHINGTON, District of Columbia, United States, 2026-Sep-01 — /Travel PR News/ — More than one million checked bags were mishandled by reporting US airlines during the first half of 2026, but the latest government data also show that baggage performance improved overall compared with the same period last year.
The US Department of Transportation recorded 1,052,493 mishandled bags from 213,072,877 bags enplaned between January and June, equivalent to 0.49 mishandled bags for every 100 checked. In the first six months of 2025, reporting carriers mishandled 1,152,475 bags at a rate of 0.52 per 100.
That works out at roughly 5,815 mishandled bags a day across the first 181 days of 2026. For passengers, however, the industry-wide figure masks a sizeable difference between individual operating carriers.
An analysis of the Department’s August 2026 Air Travel Consumer Report supplied by Global Work & Travel reordered the government’s year-to-date operating-carrier table from the highest mishandling rate to the lowest. On that basis, American Airlines recorded the highest rate at 0.73 mishandled bags per 100 enplaned, narrowly ahead of Envoy Air at 0.72 and United Airlines at 0.66.
American tops the high-to-low baggage ranking
American Airlines handled 34.5 million checked bags in the first half of the year and recorded 251,976 as mishandled, the largest absolute number among the reporting operating carriers. At the other end of the analysis, Allegiant Air recorded 4,068 mishandled bags from almost 3.5 million enplaned, a rate of 0.12 per 100.
| Rank | Operating carrier | Bags enplaned | Bags mishandled | Mishandled per 100 bags |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | American Airlines | 34,541,265 | 251,976 | 0.73 |
| 2 | Envoy Air | 5,224,762 | 37,723 | 0.72 |
| 3 | United Airlines | 29,253,054 | 192,191 | 0.66 |
| 4 | SkyWest Airlines | 14,734,864 | 81,434 | 0.55 |
| 5 | Republic Airways | 4,887,188 | 25,990 | 0.53 |
| 6 | Alaska Airlines | 14,126,041 | 74,896 | 0.53 |
| 7 | Frontier Airlines | 4,816,542 | 24,733 | 0.51 |
| 8 | Spirit Airlines | 1,870,785 | 8,719 | 0.47 |
| 9 | PSA Airlines | 6,044,565 | 26,731 | 0.44 |
| 10 | Delta Air Lines | 40,560,183 | 153,022 | 0.38 |
| 11 | Southwest Airlines | 46,350,429 | 148,875 | 0.32 |
| 12 | JetBlue Airways | 7,188,577 | 22,135 | 0.31 |
| 13 | Allegiant Air | 3,474,622 | 4,068 | 0.12 |
The figures come from the DOT’s “Mishandled Baggage: Ranking of U.S. Reporting Operating Carriers (YTD)” table. The Department defines the measure as the number of bags mishandled per 100 bags enplaned. Its published table is ordered from the lowest rate to the highest; the ranking above reverses that order to show where travellers encountered the highest reported rates.
The operating-carrier distinction also matters. Some passengers buy a ticket from a major airline brand but fly on a regional partner, so the carrier physically operating a flight can differ from the marketing airline shown most prominently during booking. The baggage table therefore should not be read as a complete measure of every aspect of an airline brand’s passenger experience.
June data point to continued improvement overall
Reporting operating carriers enplaned 39,319,187 bags in June 2026 and mishandled 194,063 of them, a rate of 0.49 per 100. In June 2025, 221,543 bags were mishandled from 39,422,338 enplaned, producing a rate of 0.56.
American Airlines recorded 52,460 mishandled bags during June alone. United reported 32,516, Southwest 30,965 and Delta 24,119. The monthly rate varied from 0.13 at Allegiant to 0.88 at Envoy, again showing how far individual results can sit from the industry average.
What travellers can do before handing over a suitcase
Jürgen Himmelmann, co-founder and chief executive of Global Work & Travel, recommends photographing both the exterior of a suitcase and its contents before check-in so passengers have a recent visual record if the bag is delayed, damaged or lost.
He also advises removing obsolete airline stickers and baggage labels before each journey and placing contact details inside the suitcase as well as on any external tag. That gives airline or airport staff another way to identify the owner if an outside label is damaged or detached.
Items that would be difficult or impossible to replace during a trip — including passports, essential medication, keys and valuable electronics — are better kept in cabin baggage where airline and security rules allow. For longer stays abroad, Himmelmann also recommends keeping enough basic essentials in carry-on luggage to manage the first couple of days if the checked suitcase is delayed.
Cancellation figures add another layer of disruption risk
Baggage was not the only area of the August report showing potential disruption. DOT data for reporting marketing carriers show 85,998 scheduled flight operations were cancelled between January and June 2026, or 2.23% of 3,856,905 scheduled operations. During the equivalent period in 2025, 59,244 flights were cancelled, representing 1.57%.
The two datasets measure different things — the baggage figures rank operating carriers, while the cited cancellation table covers marketing carriers and their networks — but together they reinforce the value of contingency planning. Himmelmann cautioned against choosing an airline on one statistic alone, noting that price, routing, connections and schedule often matter more to travellers.
How the baggage analysis was compiled
Global Work & Travel based its analysis on the August 2026 Air Travel Consumer Report produced by the Department of Transportation’s Office of Aviation Consumer Protection, using the January–June 2026 year-to-date table for US reporting operating carriers. The underlying baggage data are collected by the Department’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
The wider report also covers flight delays, cancellations, mishandled wheelchairs and scooters, oversales and consumer complaints. For baggage, the mishandling rate is more useful than the raw number alone when comparing carriers because airlines handling much larger volumes of checked luggage will naturally record more incidents in absolute terms.
