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Airline passengers are feeling squeezed. Consumer complaints about domestic air travel are up 33 percent for the first six months of this year over the same period in 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
That doesn't surprise Dean Headley, a Wichita State University associate professor of marketing who has co-authored a report rating airline quality for 20 years.
"Air travel for the majority of people is a stressful activity," he said Tuesday. "With baggage fees, paying $300 to $400 for a reserve ticket and then having to fight to get on the plane because of overbooking . . . it's like, 'Wham! Wham! Wham!' You're getting hit from all sides.
"You end up getting passengers who are little hot under the collar."
A national stir was created among frustrated travelers in the wake of last week's meltdown of Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who cursed a passenger on the public-address system and then left his plane behind with a dramatic escape down an emergency slide.
"Once, it was such a thrilling, exciting adventure to fly," said Robb Dougherty, a Texas hairstylist who used to be a frequent flier. "It's become just a nasty experience.
"People swat at you with their bags and don't apologize. No smiles. No nothing."
Complaints are up as airline travel has increased. The jump also comes at a time when passengers are being squeezed into smaller planes, hit with higher ticket prices and offered fewer snacks — if any at all.
The leading 18 airlines that handle the majority of the domestic travel saw a 7 percent increase in passengers — or a head count of 19.4 million — for the first six months this year over the same period in 2009, according to the federal transportation agency. The number of flights have also increased slightly, Headley said.
Some of the worst years for complaints in the Airline Quality Rating report that Headley co-authors came between 2004 and 2007 as the airlines recovered from 9/11 and the number of flights soared.
At the same time, complaints dropped off in 2008 and 2009 because the economy drove the number of flights down nearly 25 percent for those years, Headley said. In fact, the airline industry in 2009 had its third best overall score in the 20- year history of the report.
That's the backdrop for this year's complaint surge.
"It's the congestion issue," Headley said. "If there's not planes in the air, the system works great. When you put a near-maximum number of planes in the air, the system fractures and it goes south.
"Complaints naturally go up the more complicated things get."
And things are tricky.
A check with about a half-dozen travelers this week at Mid-Continent didn't find anything on the scale of last week's JetBlue incident, but there were some low-flying issues.
Ray Moore, a very frequent flyer, can recall only one bad experience in his air travels so far this year.
On one of his many business trips into Wichita from Raleigh, N.C., the airline temporarily lost his bag.
"Got it a day later," Moore said earlier this week shortly after arriving at Wichita Mid-Continent Airport.
Considering he has already flown 80,000 miles this year, not bad.
Cissy Tevis, a project management consultant from Atlanta who has flown about 40,000 miles so far this year, said flying is "actually getting easier, which is nice. Atlanta has put a lot of measures in to make security easier to get through."
But she has noticed that the usual storms have created more delays this year.
Airlines have opted to save money by using more regional aircraft than larger jets.
"With the larger jets, they could at least fly around the storms," Tevis said.
She said her previous flight into Wichita from Atlanta was delayed four hours because of storms.
But using the smaller aircraft allows airlines to maximize seat capacity. That in turn has increased ticket prices 18 to 20 percent over last summer, Headley said.
"Airlines have done a better job of matching supply and demand," he said. "They have put the number of seats at the right place at the right time. And since there are fewer seats, they can up the price."
But it can all add up to frustration for the traveler.
"I think there's a feeling out there that you're getting taken when you fly on a airline," said Pauline Frommer, creator of Pauline Frommer Guides and daughter of travel columnist Arthur Frommer.
"You're just a number when you fly," she added. "It's not like any other parts of your life. Any feeling of control you have is gone."
That's particularly true for the infrequent traveler.
"They have a tendency to get surprised more than the regular business traveler," Headley said. "They get to the airport and they haven't planned ahead. They've got a bag that costs them an extra $40 because it's overweight. Now they have to unpack and repack in front of everybody.
"It doesn't do anybody's attitude any good."
Richard Smith is a very infrequent traveler. After not flying for five years, he was at Mid-Continent for a return flight to Florida after visiting family in Wichita.
His flight had been delayed. With only 32 minutes to make a connecting flight in Memphis, he was growing antsy.
"I'll get there eventually, one way or another," Smith said.
His journey had only one other hiccup. Because Smith had an electronic boarding pass, an agent at the Tampa airport had pulled him out of line to double-check his identification.
He was told it was because he had such a common name.
"I never heard of such a thing," Smith said, "but it's better to be secure than not."
Moore, the business traveler from North Carolina, said he thought flight delays had dropped since a federal rule went into effect April 29 that penalized airlines for holding a plane on the tarmac for more than three hours.
"It pushes the airlines to be on time," he said.
In June, a federal report showed there were only three reports of passengers being stranded aboard airlines on the tarmac for three hours or more. In June 2009, there were 268 reports of such incidents.
Airlines can be fined $27,500 for each passenger stuck for more than three hours on a tarmac. A fine could add up to as much as a $5 million for larger jets.
"That gets their attention," Headley said. "Airlines are already on a razor-thin edge."
But he said he has bittersweet feelings about needing the rule "to make the airlines do the right stuff."
"If they really cared about the customer like they say they do, we would never have to have that rule," Headley said. "Safety is first for airlines, I'll give them that.
"But when it comes to passenger considerations and passenger concern, the passenger is inconvenienced so the airline is not."
An issue that is just starting to poke its head into the complaint file deals with the size of passengers.
Earlier this year, Southwest Airlines booted overweight actor-director Kevin Smith off a flight because he took up more than one seat. Then last month, Southwest removed a 5-foot-4, 110-pound woman from a plane so a hefty passenger could have an extra seat.
"Most of us are a little too broad in certain areas," Headley. "That's going to capture a lot of consumer attention. How did they figure out that the heavier person got the seat?
"These issues are going to start coming up more frequently because we have gone to the regional airplanes have smaller seats. It all cascades in together."
But the complaint rate could be worse.
For example, 85 percent of the seats are regularly taken on domestic flights. So the system isn't maxed out.
And so far this year, there hasn't been particularly bad weather, Headley said.
That all helps increase the on-time factor.
At the same time, Headley said, "The experience of the passenger is diminished because of the nickle-and-diming, the little unplanned surprises, the changing aircraft type.
"It's a buyer-beware kind of service."
