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Airline quality in descent

Airlines mishandled more bags, bumped more passengers, arrived late more often and heard more complaints in 2005.

By STEVE HUETTEL
Published April 3, 2006

In a year when passengers learned to expect less, discount carriers were the top performers in an annual ranking of airline quality released Monday.

JetBlue Airways topped the list for 2005, followed by low-fare rivals AirTran, now defunct Independence Air and Southwest Airlines.

But the results were a black eye for the industry. Airlines had more late flights, mishandled more bags and involuntarily bumped more passengers than in 2004. Not surprisingly, customer complaints increased.

One of the study's authors, Wichita State University associate professor Dean Headley, blamed huge airline layoffs and deep cuts in employee pay and benefits for deteriorating service.

Meanwhile, passenger loads are hitting record levels.

"Those employees have control of the bags and deal with people," Headley said. "There are fewer numbers of them, and they feel badly treated. It's a formula that doesn't work particularly well."

The industry's scores dropped in all four areas tracked by the study for the second year in a row.

On-time flights - defined as less than 15 minutes after the scheduled arrival time - dropped to 77.3 percent from 78.3 percent in 2004.

Mishandled baggage rates jumped 25 percent to just more than six per 1,000 passengers. Customer complaints rose 17 percent, and passengers involuntarily bumped off flights because of overbooking were up 2 percent.

Airlines know service has slipped and are working to improve it, said David Castelveter, spokesman for the Air Transportation Association, which represents major carriers.

They've put self-service kiosks in airports and flight delay information on their Web sites to make it easier to fly, he said, but much of what bothers customers is beyond their control.

"They're dealing with weather delays, air traffic control delays and new security measures," Castelveter said. "You've got airplanes misconnecting, passengers misconnecting and baggage misconnecting. That all translates into unhappy passengers."

The unhappiness was widespread among airlines. Only one of the 16 carriers included in the 2004 rankings improved its score last year. Comair, which flies as the Delta Connection, improved slightly but ranked next-to-last among 17 airlines in the 2005 study.

JetBlue got a boost from its top ranking in not bumping any passengers involuntarily. But the airline fell from the second-best on-time ranking in 2004 (81.8 percent) to the third worst (71.4 percent) last year.

Southwest had the lowest rate of customer complaints to the Department of Transportation (0.18 per 100,000 passengers), while US Airways had the worst (1.86 per 100,000 passengers).

AirTran had the lowest rate of mishandled bags (3.45 per 1,000 passengers); and Atlantic Southeast Airlines had the highest (17.41 per 1,000 passengers).

The rankings, sponsored by Wichita State and the University of Nebraska-Omaha Aviation Institute, use monthly statistics collected by the Department of Transportation from airlines that carry at least 1 percent of domestic passengers.

Airline consultant Darryl Jenkins said passengers should continue to feel squeezed as financially ailing airlines keep cutting flights and switching to smaller planes.

"It will be more uncomfortable in the near future," he said. "All of us who fly need to lower our expectations."

[Last modified April 3, 2006, 22:57:02]