Airlines improve performance as passenger complaints rise | The Wichita Eagle

The nation's 16 largest airlines arrived on time more often, lost fewer bags and overbooked fewer flights in 2010 than the year before.

Yet customer complaints rose nearly 30 percent.

"When it comes down to serving the customer well versus making money, the airlines are always going to take the money," said Wichita State University associate professor of marketing Dean Headley, co-author of the annual Airline Quality Rating report.

Headley wrote the 20th annual report with Brent Bowen, professor and head of the department of aviation technology at Purdue University.

The entire report will be officially released this morning in Washington, D.C.

Complaints to the Department of Transportation totaled 9,000 in 2010, compared with 7,000 in 2009, Headley said.

The biggest chunk of the complaints, 33 percent, involved flight problems, such as schedule changes, cancellations and missed connections.

Such problems put travelers in a difficult situation, Headley said.

"If you think about it, the airlines are doing it to themselves," Headley said. "They're reducing the number of seats, and they're filling the airplanes."

Airlines were on time an average of 80 percent of the time, according to the report. And that's "pretty good," Headley said.

But fewer flights and fuller planes means less opportunity to accommodate passengers when something — like a mechanical problem or bad weather — goes wrong, "which inevitably it will," Headley said.

"You know what kind of hassle it is when you go and they say the flight's not going today," he said, and the rest of the flights are full.

Yet fuller flights give airlines the ability to charge higher fares and make better margins, he said.

The airlines need to listen to consumers, he said, and ask themselves what it is they do with scheduling or cancellations that leads to all the unhappiness.

They promise passengers they will go from Point A to Point B at a given time, unless there's a good reason, Headley said.

"That's the basic promise of air travel," he said. "The airlines are playing a little fast and loose with that."

The question, Headley said, is, "Are we at another turning point?" With fewer aircraft flying, will performance take a turn for the worse?

"It's hard to say," Headley said. "It depends on how the airlines manage their supply side, and if the economy picks up.

"If fliers return, pent-up demand for that summer vacation... could be a nightmare. There's people out there competing for those seats."

Headley said the flying experience has changed over the past 10 years. Airlines now charge for checked bags, priority seating, more legroom and other things.

"It certainly hasn't changed for the better," he said. "But there's some experiences out there if you want to afford them" that "can make your flying experience less stressful."

One of the best things you can say about a flight today, Headley said, is that it is "uneventful."

"That's the (biggest) compliment I can give it."