Brussels  - European Union airlines lose roughly 10,000 bags per day, the EU's top transport official said Tuesday as he issued the bloc's first report on lost luggage in Europe's airports.

"For the period from January to October 2008, 4.6 million bags arrived late. The number of bags lost in the winter of 2008-09 was 13 for every 1,000 passengers," EU Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani told journalists in Brussels.

That means that, on average, one in every 64 airline passengers - the equivalent of two people on every full flight of a Boeing 737 or Airbus A320 - cannot find their bag on arrival.

Connecting flights are particularly prone to the problem, with nearly half of all missing baggage being held up between flights.

While the great majority of bags are found and returned to their owners within 48 hours, some 15 per cent of them take longer, or are lost for ever.

The figures are better than in 2007, but the situation is "excessive and unacceptable" and "extremely worrying," Tajani said.

"We have to step up a gear now," he said.

The commission, the EU's executive, is therefore going to launch a public initiative to find out how passengers and airlines think the situation can be improved, with an eye to proposing solutions in the course of 2010.

Ultimately, the commission could bring forward new regulations to improve the services offered by airlines and baggage handlers, Tajani suggested. However, this would only come after consultation.  (dpa)