Report: Airline quality mostly improves, except for complaints

The nation’s airlines improved their performance in three of four quality measures last year, according to a new study.

Customer complaints was not one of them.

Those are the partial findings of the 2016 Airline Quality Rating report. The full report will be released at a news conference Monday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

“Three of the four got better, although mostly just slightly,” said Dean Headley, co-author of the report and an associate professor of marketing at Wichita State University.

The report’s data is drawn from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s monthly Air Travel Consumer Report in 2015.

The three measures where the airline industry — comprising 10 mainline carriers and three regional airlines — improved were on-time arrivals, denied boardings and mishandled baggage.

The industry’s on-time arrivals rose from 76.2 percent in 2014 to 79.9 percent in 2015.

Denied boardings during that same period fell from 0.92 per 10,000 passengers to 0.76.

And the rate of mishandled baggage also dropped slightly between 2014 and 2015: from 3.62 per 1,000 passengers to 3.24.

“Generally speaking, things are going pretty good as far as the industry goes,” Headley said.

But, added report co-author and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University professor Brent Bowen in a statement, “The results clearly show that there is room for improvement.”

Especially with customer complaints.

That’s the one measure that saw a year-over-year uptick: from 1.38 per 100,000 passengers in 2014 to 1.9 in 2015.

“That’s the highest rate since 2001,” Headley said, referring to the 2.1 complaints per 100,000 passengers that year.

Among types of complaints, flight problems was the leading type of complaint — 36.1 percent of 15,260 complaints made to the federal Transportation Department in 2015 — followed by baggage (13.4 percent); reservations, ticketing and boarding (11.8 percent); and customer service (11.3 percent).

Total complaints received by the Transportation Department were up by 3,895 from 2014.

Best and worst

The airlines measured in the report include Alaska, American, Delta, Frontier, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit, United and Virgin America. Also included are regional airlines — or “feeder” carriers to major airlines American, Delta and United — Envoy Air, ExpressJet and Sky West.

The rankings of those airlines’ overall performance will come in the full report on Monday.

But the partial report does reveal the best and worst performing airline in each of the four quality measures.

The report said Hawaiian performed the best in on-time arrivals at 88.4 percent, while low-cost, no-frills carrier Spirit Airlines was the worst, at 69 percent.

JetBlue was the best performer in denied boardings, with a rate of 0.02 per 10,000 passengers. Envoy was the worst, with a rate of 2.35.

For the second year in a row, Virgin America was the best performer in mishandled baggage, with a rate of 0.84 per 1,000 passengers. That compares with the report’s worst performer in 2015, which was Envoy, with a rate of 8.52.

In terms of customer complaints, Alaska had the fewest in 2015, with 0.5 complaints per 100,000 passengers. It also had the fewest customer complaints in 2014, the report said.

The airline with the most customer complaints was Spirit, with 11.73 complaints per 100,000 passengers.

One other takeaway Headley noticed with this year’s report is the effect of merged airlines.

He said for a long time he thought bigger isn’t always better when it comes to airlines and the passenger experience. But Delta, which was among the first of the big carriers to kick off a wave of airline industry consolidation with its Northwest merger, has turned in a consistent performance in the report over the past few years.

“Delta’s right up there with the little guys,” Headley said. “Merged carriers don’t have to be that bad.”

This story was originally published April 2, 2016 at 6:01 PM with the headline "Report: Airline quality mostly improves, except for complaints."