Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.
27.07.2023 - 18:54 / smartertravel.com / Tim Winship
Is the state of air travel improving? Not according to the DOT, which just released its Air Travel Consumer Report for 2015.
Airline passengers filed 20,170 complaints with the DOT in 2015, up 30 percent over 2014. That was for all airlines, foreign and domestic, and travel agents. For U.S. airlines, the picture was even grimmer. Complaints increased by 34 percent, from 11,365 in 2014 to 15,260 in 2015.
American received the most complaints, with 3,983, followed by United with 2,721, Spirit with 2,069, Frontier with 1,037, and Delta with 1,025.
RELATED: Congress Suspects Airlines Are Impeding Customer Complaints
When the numbers of complaints are contextualized, against the numbers of passengers served, U.S. carriers ranked as follows, from worst to best:
Spirit – 11.73 complaints per 100,000 passengers Frontier – 7.86 complaints per 100,000 passengers American – 3.36 complaints per 100,000 passengers United – 2.85 complaints per 100,000 passengers Virgin America – 1.66 complaints per 100,000 passengers Envoy Air – 1.45 complaints per 100,000 passengers Hawaiian – 1.06 complaints per 100,000 passengers JetBlue – 0.86 complaints per 100,000 passengers Delta – 0.74 complaints per 100,000 passengers SkyWest – 0.65 complaints per 100,000 passengers ExpressJet – 0.62 complaints per 100,000 passengers Southwest – 0.52 complaints per 100,000 passengers Alaska – 0.50 complaints per 100,000 passengersSpirit isn’t only the worst, it’s the worst by far. The company began the new year by replacing its CEO with Robert Fornaro, who has vowed to improve the airline’s public image and its operational efficiency. However, reversing such a deep trust deficit won’t be quick or easy, and the expected merger with Frontier, the second-worst-ranked carrier, will make the job even more challenging in the short term.
At the other end of the complaint spectrum, Alaska, Southwest, Delta, and JetBlue all drew fewer than one complaint per 100,000 passengers. In an industry that consistently underperforms its customers’ expectations, that’s as good as it gets.
Make Your Voice Heard
Airline-related complaints may be registered on the DOT’s complaint website, or by phone, at 202-366-2220.
Reader Reality Check
Air travel: Getting better, worse, the same?
More from SmarterTravel: American Ups the Ante for Premium Airport Lounges Spirit Has the Profits. Now It Wants the Love Airlines to Harried Flyers: ‘Relax, Have a Pretzel’After 20 years working in the travel industry, and 15 years writing about it, Tim Winship knows a thing or two about travel. Follow him on Twitter @twinship.
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Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.
In 2014, at the behest of Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), the DOT’s Office of Inspector General began an audit of U.S. frequent flyer programs, and the DOT’s monitoring thereof, with a particular focus on unfair and deceptive practices (summary, with a link to the full .pdf report, here). The audit results were published this month, with the following headline: “Improvements needed in DOT’s process for identifying unfair or deceptive practices in airline frequent flyer programs.”
Beginning on June 1, Spirit will become the third airline to pull out of the Cuba market altogether, joining Frontier and Silver Airways. Two other airlines, American and JetBlue, have cut capacity on their Cuba flights, either by reducing frequency or downgrading to smaller planes.
Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.
With the high probability of Virgin America’s being folded into Alaska Airlines within the next two years, Virgin loyalists are in the market for an alternative. And JetBlue wants to be that alternative.
Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.
Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.
Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.
Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.
Could Spirit, the airline everybody loves to hate, become a bit less hateful? If the company’s new CEO has his way, it will do just that.
Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.
Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.