The world's favourite airline? Now BA is the most likely to lose your bags

British Airways lost more bags than any European airline from October to December and was almost the worst for punctuality and missing luggage during 2007 as a whole.

More than 1.14million of its passengers' bags went missing last year, the Association of European Airlines said.

One customer in 37 lost lugage last year, partly thanks to chaos at Heathrow from bad weather, a security scare and luggage system failures.

But BA made pre-tax profits of £788million for the last nine months of 2007, up 35 per cent.

The annual AEA report said for every 1,000 passengers, BA lost 26 bags. It carried more than 43million passengers.

On lost baggage, BA ranked 25th out of 26 airlines for 2007, in front of TAP Air Portugal.

It fared little better for punctuality, although it was undermined by the fact that most of its planes use overstretched Heathrow, which struggles to cope with a logjam of flights.

Only 56.2 per cent of its long-haul flights arrived on time, with only TAP Portugal and SpanAir faring worse.

Just 61.5 per cent left on time. A delayed flight leaves or arrives 15 minutes after schedule.

Meanwhile, 64.7 per cent of short and medium-haul flights arrived and 67.5 per cent of departures left on time.

BA said matters would improve when its Heathrow Terminal 5 HQ opens in March.

It added: "Heathrow is the world's most congested two-runway airport and is handling 20million more customers a year than it was designed for."

•Business-class-only flights will take off from London's City Airport for New York next year. But BA's "pinstripe express" will have to stop for fuel and will take 110 minutes longer to get to New York than flights from Heathrow.