Is The Wrap alone in thinking that airline standards are slipping as some legacy carriers dumb down their products to bring their costs in line with the low cost carriers?

It would seem not.

The overall performance of US airlines worsened in 2006 for the third consecutive year, according to the 17th annual Airline Quality Ratings.

Airline hassles are also on the rise: More passengers found themselves bumped, their flights delayed or their bags lost last year than in 2005, the study found.

Hawaiian Airlines was the best performer among 18 airlines surveyed.

The industry rating for 2006 is the lowest since 2000, which was one of the worst years ever for airline service in the United States.

Southwest Airlines had the lowest consumer complaint rate, with 0.18 per 100,000 passengers while the overall number of airline complaints stabilised since hitting a five-year low in 2005.

Yet the misery for passengers isn’t just confined to the United States.

British Airways was this week shamed as the carrier that lost more bags than any of its European rivals.

BA admitted that its performance had not been up to scratch.

A survey by the Association of European Airlines showed that BA mislaid 23 bags per 1,000 passengers last year, two more than the carrier in second place, TAP Air Portugal and nearly five more than Lufthansa.

According to the Air Transport Users Council, the consumer watchdog, 5.6 million bags were "mishandled" last year by 24 European carriers.

And it gets worse for British Airways. A UK survey of scheduled airlines punctuality figures in 2006 revealed BA was 19th in the poll, with an average delay of 19.1 minutes.

Virgin Atlantic scored even worse, coming 21st in the table with average delays of 26.7 minutes.

Bmi regional was the most punctual scheduled airline in 2006, according to the latest figures from the CAA.

At London Heathrow, KLM and KLM Cityhopper were the most punctual airlines, with average delays of 11.61 minutes.

Singapore Airlines was second, with delays of 11.67 minutes.

The name of the game is spying

There’s a bit of James Bond in every Brit, according to the UK Undercover Survey, which suggests Britons are a nation of Nosey-Parkers. They love nothing better than to rifle through their partner’s text messages or tap phone conversations.

The most popular way of keeping tabs on a partner is by checking their text messages. Love cheats beware because checking emails is the second most popular spying activity.

Rummaging through a partner’s pockets is said to be especially popular with women.

The survey was commissioned by the Science Museum in London for its Science of Spying exhibition, which ends in September.

By-pass the loo in Baku

The 2007 Worldwide Quality of Living Survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting has the usual suspects at the head of the pack: Zurich, Geneva, Vancouver, Vienna and Auckland. Singapore, at no 34, achieved the best result in Asia.

Baghdad remains the world’s least enticing city for expatriates. Other low-scoring cities for overall quality of living include Brazzaville in Congo, Bangui in the Central African Republic and Khartoum in Sudan.

The survey found that four of the world’s five top-scoring cities for health and sanitation are in North America. Calgary ranks top followed by Honolulu.

Ottawa and Minneapolis followed Helsinki –the only European city in the top five.

The lowest-ranking city for health and sanitation is Baku in Azerbaijan. Other low-scoring cities include Dhaka in Bangladesh, Antananarivo in Madagascar and Port Au Prince in Haiti.