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SAVVY TRAVELER By
Irene Croft Jr.
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If you have detected a slippage in airline performance and customer service over the past few years, your personal radar is right on target.
According to the most recent University of Michigan American Customer Satisfaction Index, by almost every measure of performance, airlines rank less favorably than the Internal Revenue Service in consumer opinion. Ouch.
The U.S. airline industry is expected to earn a whopping $4 billion in 2007, its highest grossing year since before 9/11 and possibly in the entire history of commercial aviation. Despite the carriers' soaring revenues, government statistics confirm the decline in our skies. The Air Travel Consumer Report, published monthly by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Aviation Consumer Protection Division, ought to be required reading for America's flying public.
As stated at airconsumer.ost .dot.gov/index.htm, the ATC Report is "designed to assist consumers with information on the quality of services provided by the airlines."
The document is divided into six sections: flight delays, mishandled baggage, oversales (bumping), consumer complaints, customer-service reports and animal transport problems. And even you readers who loathe numbers and statistics will experience several "aha!" moments when you spot irrefutable proof of what you've known all along: Flying can be the worst component of travel.
Received complaints/reports are assigned to 12 categories:
JUICY DATA
In the Air Travel Consumer Report you will find juicy nuggets of information about 21 big and small domestic carriers such as:
DOT recorded 5,049 passenger complaints against U.S. airlines in the first half of 2007 and all of 32 compliments. In both cases, this is a more than 50 percent increase over the same period in 2006. The greatest number of complaints among the major carriers was received by U.S. Airways at 3.15 per 100,000 passengers and the fewest by Continental at .95. The top three sources of fliers' disgruntlement were flight problems, mishandled baggage and poor customer service.
For the 12 months ending June 2007, Delta had the best on-time arrivals of the six major airlines, American and U.S. Airways the worst, and our own little carriers, Hawaiian and Aloha, ranked first and second-best overall.
The first six months of this year, Delta led the majors in involuntary bumping at 3.32 per 10,000 passengers, with Continental the lowest at 1.82.
From January to June 2007, mishandled baggage reports were up 25 percent over the same period in 2006. U.S. Airways received 8.95 complaints per 1,000 passengers and American 7.62, the poorest records by the Big Boys. Hawaiian and Aloha were among the only three carriers to improve their luggage-handling performance.
WHOM TO CONTACT
If you have experienced airline performance and service problems, call the Aviation Consumer Protection Division 24 hours daily at 202-366-2220 to record your complaint. Calls are returned Mondays through Fridays, generally between 7:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern time. Complaints will be reviewed and ac knowledged and will be forwarded to an airline official for further consideration. The e-mail address is airconsumer@dot.gov. Address letters to Aviation Consumer Protection Division, C-75, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Ave., SE, Washington, DC 20590.
When describing your concern, include your name, address, daytime phone number, name of the airline about which you are complaining, date of flight, flight number, and origin and destination cities of your trip. All complaints are entered in DOT's computerized aviation industry monitoring system, and are charged to the company in question in the monthly ATC Report. They are reviewed to determine the extent to which carriers are in compliance with federal aviation consumer protection regulations. The registered complaints also serve as a basis for rule-making, legislation and research.
Irene Croft Jr. of Kailua, Kona, is a travel writer and 40-year veteran globetrotter. Her column is published in this section every other week.
