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Complaints soar on US Airlines

Delays top DOT complaints

Long flight delays for passengers on the leading US airlines more than tripled in June 2007 compared with the previous month, leading to a spike in customer complaints, an official report showed.

The report by the US Department of Transportation (DOT) also showed an increase in June of flight cancellations, luggage problems, and "bumping" -- when an airline is overbooked and does not allow some passengers to board a flight for which they hold a ticket.

The travel woes contributed to a sharp rise in customer complaints, which reached 1094 in June, up 43.4 percent from the 763 complaints received by the Department of Transportation in the same month in 2006 and 17.8 percent more than the 929 filed in May.

"Most customer complaints -- more than 400 out of 1,000 -- in June were about flight problems such as delays or cancelations," Bill Mosley of the Department of Transportation said.

Passengers on 462 aircraft sat on the tarmac for more than three hours in June awaiting clearance for take-off, the report showed.

That was more than three times the 137 aircraft which were delayed for more than three hours the previous month, and nearly double the 251 aircraft that suffered long delays in June 2006, according to statistics compiled by the US Department of Transportation.

In terms of long delays for air travellers, June was "the worst month since the beginning of 2000," Dave Smallen of the DOT's Bureau of Transportation Statistics said.

The weather was the primary cause of nearly 45 percent of the delayed flights, according to the report, to which 20 US airlines contributed data.

Passengers' second biggest gripe after flight problems concerned mishandled luggage, Mosley said.

"We had more than 200 mishandled luggage complaints in June. Mishandled luggage refers to any kind of baggage problem: lost, damaged or stolen, but mostly delayed luggage that is eventually found again," he said.

In June, three family pets died and one was injured while travelling by air, the report said. That was down from five "pet incidents" in May.

An estimated 1.22 passengers per 10,000 were denied boarding in the second quarter of 2007, compared with 1.12 per 10,000 in the same period a year earlier.

The DOT report lauded Hawaiian Airlines as the most on-time carrier of the 20 that contributed data for the study, with nearly 93 percent of its flights arriving on schedule.

Atlantic Southeast Airlines, which services the United States, Canada, Mexico and destinations in the Caribbean, and international carrier American Airlines scored low marks for punctual flights.

Only around 58 percent of American Airlines flights arrived on time in June, while Atlantic Southeast Airlines passengers fared worse, reaching their final destination on schedule only 56 percent of the time.

According to a report published last month by the DOT, US airlines carried 243.2 million scheduled domestic and international passengers on their systems during the first four months of 2007, a rise of 2.2 percent on passenger volume during the same period in 2006.

Notes from the Flight Desk
While flying extensively a while ago, my expense accounts averaged $92,000 per year! Boy, did I learn a few things about how "buying power" could manipulate pricing and the value of a good travel agent... more