If you have recently felt more cheated than normal by airlines, you aren’t alone, according to the US government.
Air travelers lodged more complaints with federal regulators last year than they did in 2014, the Department of Transportation said Thursday.
The number of complaints filed with the department’s Aviation Consumer Protection Division was up by 29.8 percent in 2015—to 20,170, from 15,539 in 2014.
The most frequently cited grievances in both years were broadly classified by the department as “flight problems”—cancellations, delays, and missed connections. It reported hearing 6,433 of them last year—up from 4,974 in 2014.
The number of complains about fares also nearly doubled on a year-over-year basis—to 1,813, up from 916.
In July, the Justice Department confirmed that it was investigating several major US airlines for price-fixing. The Washington Post reported that Delta Air Lines, Southwest, American Airlines and United Airlines were among those being probed. The quartet controls about 80 percent of the US air travel market.
The increase in reported dissatisfaction does not appear correlated with a higher general volume of business for airlines. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the number of airline passengers was 4.8 percent higher in 2015.
The department did not list the most-frequently griped-about airlines in terms of passengers served, but it did list the twelve outfits with the fewest complaints per 100,000 “emplanements.” The airline that was the subject of the fewest complaints by this measure was Alaska Airlines.
Of the big four—Delta, Southwest, American, and United—the subject of the most complaints per 100,000 passengers were American (3.18) and United (2.7). Southwest and Delta respectively received 0.52 and 0.75 complaints per 100,000 emplanements.
