U.S. Consumer Airline Complaints Up 300 Percent from 2019

The U.S. Division of Transportation in April acquired greater than 5,000 complaints from shoppers about airline service, up 14.8 p.c from March and up 321.5 p.c from the roughly 1,200 complaints acquired in April 2019, the company reported final week.

Of the 5,079 April complaints, practically 63 p.c involved U.S. carriers, about 28 p.c involved overseas air carriers and the remaining 10 p.c have been about journey firms. A 3rd of the complaints involved refunds, whereas flight issues involving cancellations, delays or “different deviations from airways’ schedules” have been an in depth second at 31 p.c.

Reporting carriers canceled 2.3 p.c of their scheduled home flights in April, up from 1.5 p.c in March, however decrease than the two.4 p.c reported in April 2019, in keeping with DOT. Delta Air Strains (1.1 p.c), Hawaiian Airways (1.4 p.c) and American Airways (1.6 p.c) had the bottom proportion of cancellations in April whereas Spirit Airways (10.3 p.c), JetBlue (9 p.c) and Alaska Airways (3.8 p.c) had the very best.

The report comes as carriers trim schedules to enhance operations after difficult vacation weekends. Cancellations affected practically 3,000 flights Memorial Day weekend and practically 3,400 on Juneteenth weekend, in keeping with FlightAware.