Airline complaints soar in 2012

Posted: Tuesday, April 9, 2013 12:00 am
By: Joan Lowy, Associated Press

By JOAN LOWY
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Airline passenger complaints to the Transportation Department surged by one-fifth last year, even though other measures such as on-time arrivals and mishandled baggage show airlines are doing a better job, according to a report being released today.
Private researchers who have analyzed federal data on airline performance say it’s not surprising that passengers are irritated.
Carriers keep shrinking the size of seats in order to stuff more people into planes.
Empty middle seats that might provide a little more room have vanished. And more people who have bought tickets are being turned away because flights are overbooked.
“The way airlines have taken 130-seat airplanes and expanded them to 150 seats to squeeze out more revenue I think is finally catching up with them,” said Dean Headley, a business professor at Wichita State University in Kansas who has co-written the annual report for 23 years.
“People are saying, ‘Look, I don’t fit here. Do something about this.’ At some point airlines can’t keep shrinking seats to put more people into the same tube,” he said.
The industry is even looking at ways to make today’s smaller-than-a-broom closet toilets more compact in the hope of squeezing a few more seats onto planes.
“I can’t imagine the uproar that making toilets smaller might generate,” Headley said, especially given that passengers increasingly weigh more than they use to. Nevertheless, “will it keep them from flying? I doubt it would.”
The rate of complaints per 100,000 passengers also rose to 1.43 last year from 1.19 in 2011.
In recent years, some airlines have shifted to larger planes that can carry more people, but that hasn’t been enough to make up for an overall reduction in flights.
The rate at which passengers with tickets were denied seats because planes were full rose to 0.97 denials per 10,000 passengers last year, compared with 0.78 in 2011.
It used to be in cases of overbookings that airlines usually could find a passenger who would volunteer to give up a seat in exchange for cash, a free ticket or some other compensation with the expectation of catching another flight later that day or the next morning.
Not anymore.

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