WASHINGTON -- Consumer complaints to the Transportation Department
about air travel, and about U.S. airline service in particular,
tripled in September compared with the same month in 1998.
Complaints also were up more than 34% from August. For the year
through September, complaints have more than doubled.
The number of September complaints was the most the DOT has
received in a month since January 1998.
Now the question is: Why?
The Air Transport Association put its spin on the September
numbers even before they came out.
"Anticipating" the DOT's monthly report would show a large
increase in complaints, the ATA put out a news release a week
earlier that pinned the blame on the air traffic control
system.
"It's ironic that the government's air traffic control system is
responsible for huge
increases in delays, which causes complaints to skyrocket. Then
the DOT reports complaints as if they were solely the fault of the
airlines," ATA president Carol Hallett said.
The ATA's preemptive strike was particularly significant because
the association typically dismisses the significance of DOT
statistics, which cover only consumer complaints submitted directly
to the DOT. ATA has never sent a news release out in response, much
less in advance.
With the Nov. 16 release of the numbers, the DOT finally
responded.
"We believe a large part of the reason [for the increase] is
passengers are angry about poor air service," a DOT spokesman
said.
That's the reason the DOT has supported passenger rights
legislation and has pledged to monitor the airlines' new customer
service plans, he said.
What do the numbers show?
Out of 3,161 September complaints about airline service,
including 2,732 about U.S. airlines, the DOT received 467 about
delays. That's nearly five times more than a year earlier.
The customer service category, which includes complaints about
rude employees, inadequate meals and treatment of delayed
passengers, was four times higher.
Flight cancellation and baggage complaints each tripled.
The argument could be made that travelers just are complaining
more to the DOT in general. The office that receives the complaints
received a great deal of publicity this summer during the
congressional debate over passenger rights legislation, and on
Aug. 23, USA Today published its address on the front page of
its Money section.
The number of complaints to the DOT about foreign airlines rose
from 99 in September 1998 to 274 this September. In the tour
operator category, the number rose from 35 to 80.
There still were only a handful of complaints about travel
agents, however. That number rose from 3 to 9.
Ironically, the rise in complaints came in a month in which the
U.S. airlines showed some improvement in service.
The on-time performance of the 10 biggest U.S. airlines rose to
79.3% in September, better than in August (76.1%) and September
1998 (78.9%).
Also, the number of mishandled baggage reports received by the
airlines fell to 3.99 per 1,000 passengers, down from 4.94 in
August and 4.41 in September 1998. But the rate still is up
slightly for the first nine months of the year.