Airline Complaints Down 70% From Last June, U.S. Reports

Consumer complaints to the government about overbooked flights, mishandled baggage and other air travel inconveniences dropped sharply last month, continuing a trend that has seen complaints plummet 70% during the past year, the Transportation Department said Thursday in its monthly report on airline performance.

Industry officials pointed to the figures as a sign of the improvements by the airlines, but some analysts were skeptical.

“Clearly, these figures offer a strong indication that the carriers are emphasizing service and that some of the turbulence surrounding (recent industry) mergers is subsiding,” said Stephen Hayes, vice president of the Air Transport Assn., the airlines’ biggest trade group. “There’s no question that the product is continuing to improve.”

However, Julius Maldutis, an airline analyst with the investment firm of Salomon Bros. in New York, said the figures fail to adequately account for organized complaint campaigns against specific airlines, seasonal fluctuations and differences between airlines in scheduling and routes.

“These statistics must be viewed with a great deal of skepticism,” he said.

The Transportation Department, which began last fall to track the airlines’ on-time performance and other elements of service after a flurry of complaints from Congress and others, defends the figures as a valuable--if imperfect--tool to encourage service improvements.

Among the statistics in this month’s report:

- The government received 1,707 customer complaints about airline service in June, down 70% from a high of 5,774 received a year ago. Continental and Eastern airlines, both subjects of recent federal investigations, far outpaced their competitors as the targets of complaints. Continental and Eastern are both owned by the Texas Air holding company.

- 81.9% of all flights tracked for May arrived on time, which is defined as being within 15 minutes of schedule. That was a slight drop from April’s record performance of 82.6% but still represented the second-best showing since the tracking began--up from 74.3% last fall.

Southwest, America West and American continued to top the list in on-time performance, while Pan American, USAir and Eastern continued to hover at the bottom.

- Los Angeles International Airport, which once was below the national average for on-time arrivals, moved up to ninth place among the nation’s 27 biggest airports for May, with 84.6% of all flights on schedule. That compared to 81.9% efficiency in April and about 70% last September, when such data was first collected.

- Complaints about mishandled baggage dropped from 6.53 per 1,000 passengers in April to 6.16 in May.

- The number of passengers bumped from flights dropped to 3.7 per 10,000 boardings from 5.5 last year.

PERFORMANCE BY CARRIER Overall percentage of flights arriving on time in May:

Airline / Percentage

Southwest 92.5%

America West 90.9

American 87.6

Delta 87.4

Northwest 83.9

TWA 81.6

Alaska 81.3

United 80.5

Continental 80.1

Piedmont 77.5

Eastern 76.2

USAir 70.7

Pan American 68.8

Source: Dept. of Transportation ON-TIME FLIGHTS AT LAX Percentage of on-time flights at L.A. International in May:

Airline / Percentage

America West 89.8%

Southwest 88.7

Delta 88.2

American 87.8

Alaska 87.4

USAir 86.2

United 85.0

Piedmont 81.5

Continental 80.0

TWA 75.1

Northwest 74.7

Eastern 67.5

Pan American 58.6

Source: Dept. of Transportation PASSENGER REPORTS OF MISHANDLED BAGGAGE

Passengers Reports per Airline Boarded 1,000 Passengers Southwest 1,332,954 3.23 Pan American 665,070 3.40 Alaska 416,378 4.21 American 5,162,657 4.30 Northwest 3,351,712 4.33 Eastern 2,947,679 5.56 America West 1,092,509 6.45 Delta 4,913,766 6.77 United 4,875,595 6.96 USAir 3,154,010 6.98 Piedmont 2,467,564 7.55 Continental 3,041,073 7.58 TWA 1,951,262 9.54

Source: Dept. of Transportation