2023 has not been a good year for U.S. airlines, with complaints rising by 29% to a record high when compared to the previous year. The numbers are concerning as U.S. travel numbers only rose 11% over 2022.
The Office of Aviation Consumer Protection (OACP) which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), received a total of 61,233 complaints compared to 47,591 in 2022. With the overwhelming increase, the DOT was more than half a year late releasing statistics for June through December 2023, only publishing them on July 5, 2024.
The United States Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) tabulated 2023’s complaints stats, showing quite a few interesting trends. For starters, Alaska and Southwest ranked best, being the two lowest of the 10 U.S. carriers, and were two of three (the other being Allegiant) that saw a decrease in the number of lodged complaints.
Others like Delta, American, Hawaiian and United saw increases, but still managed to keep them below 10 per 100,000 passengers.
Unfortunately things haven’t gone so well for JetBlue, Spirit and Frontier, all of which saw double digit numbers in 2023. Frontier has come out at the bottom of the pack, seeing a 68% increase in complaints over 2022, landing in at just shy of 33 complaints per 100k passengers.
Spirit, another low cost carrier, didn’t fare well either but managed to keep complaints to less than half per 100k passengers versus Frontier, even though they saw a 46% increase year over year.
On a positive note, the PIRG found that cancellations (flights cancelled within seven days before the departure date) dropped by half, accounting for 1.29% of scheduled flights versus 2.71% in 2022. Delays also reduced slightly, with 78.3% of the 7.28 million flights in 2023 arriving on time over an on time figure of 76.7% in 2022.
A better 2024 onward?
Frontier has introduced a number of new measures in order to cut down on bad customer experiences, including revamping its pricing structure, offering better phone support, improving operational efficiency, and removing change and cancellation fees.
Besides Frontier, Spirit also removed change and cancellation fees, putting them on the same playing field with the rest of the U.S. domestic carriers. On top of that, airlines operating within the U.S. are now required to provide automatic refunds in cases where flights have been canceled or significantly changed, if there is significantly delayed baggage return and/or if extra services not provided (such as paid seat upgrade, Wi-Fi, IFE).
Featured image: Frontier Airlines
