Airlines Warned of Fines if Complaints Aren’t Cut

The Department of Transportation warned the nation’s airlines Wednesday that they face stiff penalties unless there is a reduction in the number of complaints being received about them from the traveling public.

In a letter to 36 airlines, Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole warned that the department will “not hesitate to refer a matter to our enforcement office for action,” adding that “there are steps that carriers can take to reduce the level of passenger dissatisfaction.”

She said some of the practices that result in passenger complaints “could be actionable under DOT regulations or statutory prohibitions.” However, she added that her agency would “be more than happy to work with you to resolve these problems.”

Most Common Complaints

Dole listed a number of passengers’ most common complaints: the boarding of flights that the airlines know will take off late, making the passengers wait in the plane on the Tarmac; last-minute revision of flight schedules; delayed ticket refunds (which, regulations say, must be made within seven days) and overbooking. Flight delays, lost and mislaid baggage and flight cancellations are also the source of many complaints, she added.

Federal law gives the agency the power to levy fines of up to $1,000 a day for each violation of its consumer protection rules.

A Transportation Department spokesman said Wednesday that the agency has received an avalanche of consumer complaints in recent months.

In April alone, it got 2,103 complaints against airlines, including U.S. and foreign carriers, cargo carriers and tour operators. This compares with 1,050 complaints in April, 1986, the spokesman said. Of the complaints this April, 1,903 were against U.S. carriers; that figure was 876 in April, 1986.

The two airlines owned by the Texas Air holding company--Continental and Eastern airlines--dominated the statistics, with Continental having the worst record of any airline. According to the statistics for April, there were 25.40 complaints about Continental per 100,000 passengers. Its total was 767.

Investigating Continental

Eastern was third with a rate of 6.98 per 100,000--or 216 complaints. Continental is being investigated by the Transportation Department’s enforcement arm to determine how extensive its violations are.

Second in terms of complaints per 100,000 passengers was a small airline named American TransAir, based in Indianapolis. Only eight complaints about it were received, but that translated into 7.27 complaints per 100,000 passengers.

Speaking at the Texas Air annual meeting Wednesday in Los Angeles, Frank Lorenzo, Texas Air’s chairman, said most of the company’s passenger-service problems have been solved. He conceded that Continental had been slow in making ticket refunds because it inherited a four-month backlog when it acquired troubled People Express last December.

“The refund problems are largely clean-up problems from the merger,” he said.

Staff writer Denise Gellene in Los Angeles contributed to this story.