Airlines get better but complaints still rising
Print Edition
MORE US flights are arriving on time and airlines are losing fewer bags, yet more consumers are complaining about air travel.
Traveler complaints jumped 34 percent last year, to the highest level since 2000. The top frustration is problem flights including cancelations and delays, which is unchanged in 16 years.
“Everything is getting better, but they are still unhappy about the same things,” says Dean Headley, a marketing professor at Wichita State and co-author of an annual report on airline quality. He thinks passengers resent the growth in extra fees for things like checked baggage and changing or canceling a reservation, and that makes them quicker to complain when something goes wrong with their trip.
The annual report by Headley and Brent Bowen, dean of the aviation school at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, was released yesterday. The researchers use publicly available information from the US Department of Transportation to rate the airlines for on-time performance, baggage handling, bumping passengers because of oversold flights, and complaints filed with the government.
Headley and Bowen named Virgin America the winner followed by JetBlue Airways and Delta Air Lines. The honor for Virgin came the same day that the boutique carrier announced it was being sold to Alaska Airlines.
The report ranked Spirit Airlines last, just ahead of Envoy, Frontier and American Airlines.Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines, budget carriers that charge lots of fees and had poor on-time records, had the worst complaint rates.
It was the fifth increase in complaints in six years. Still, more than 670 million people flew on US carriers last year, so only a tiny slice bothered to complain to the government.
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