For those truly unhappy with the flight or the service aboard, there is always the option of filing a formal complaint to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Given the extra effort this takes to fill out and the likelihood of things fizzling out with a generic response, the formal complaint is often a last resort used by the most frustrated passengers after unsuccessfully trying to reach the airline directly. According to data that the DOT released at the start of the month, the number of complaints travelers filed against U.S.-based released last year grew by 29% from 2022 to a total of 67,661 submissions.
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Breaking the complaint numbers even further, public interest advocacy group U.S. PIRG Education Fund identified budget carrier Frontier (FRON) as the airline travelers complained about the most.
People are complaining the most about these low-cost airlines
Outpacing runner-up Spirit Airlines (SAVE) by more than double, Frontier had 32.99 complaints for every 100,000 passengers, compared to 14.76 for Spirit and 13.32 for JetBlue Airways (JBLU) .
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Out of the 10 airlines looked at by PIRG Education Fund, Alaska Airlines (ALK) had the lowest number at just 2.36 complaints per 100,000 customers. In an indication that low cost doesn't necessarily mean "high number of complaints," Southwest Airlines (LUV) was the second-best with 3.61 complaints.
The country's "big three" carriers of United Airlines (UAL) , American Airlines (AAL) and Delta Air Lines (DAL) landed in the middle with the latter being the third-least-complained-about airline with 3.64 submissions.
United and American received a respective 5.97 and 7.47 complaints. With the overall numbers showing travelers complaining more, Alaska, Southwest and Allegiant Air (ALGT) were the only airlines to see complaint numbers drop from 2022 to 2023 — for the latter, just under 7 per 100,000.
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Fewer cancelations but more delays: What travelers complained about in 2023
Overall, the number of passenger complaints spiked dramatically when the Covid-19 pandemic profoundly shook up flying in 2020 and that number has yet to drop to what was seen in 2019.
"The 10 largest airlines and their codeshare marketing partners canceled 93,897 flights in 2023, down from 190,038 in 2022," writes Teresa Murray of PIRG Education Fund. "Delays, however, got worse. Of the 7.28 million flights scheduled in 2023 for the top 10 airlines, only 78.3% arrived on time. That's slightly worse than the 76.7% on-time figure for 2022."
The number of lost or damaged baggage, which the DOT tracks independently of passenger complaints, improved slightly between 2022 and 2023 (from 0.64% to 0.58%) and remained generally low. The most dissatisfaction tended to arise when customers found themselves faced with a problem but struggled to reach the airline for help or resolution—singled-out incidents include being placed on hold for long periods amid canceled flights and needing to contact multiple representatives to receive a refund that has already been approved.
"Airlines should focus on realistic scheduling, fast refunds for canceled flights even before the new law takes effect, transparent pricing upfront instead of add-on gotcha fees, and quick resolution of problems so consumers don't need to file a complaint," Murray writes further.
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