Complaints from travelers to the US government are at their highest level since the COVID pandemic, when airlines were slow to refund their payments.
Air travel became more miserable last year, if the number of consumer complaints filed with the U.S. government is any measure.
The Transportation Department said Friday it received nearly 97,000 complaints in 2023, up from 86,000 the year before. The department said there were so many complaints that it took until July to sort through the complaints and compile the numbers.
That's the highest number of consumer complaints about airlines since 2020, when airlines were slow to issue refunds to customers after the coronavirus pandemic shut down air travel.
The increase in complaints came even though airlines canceled far fewer U.S. flights — 116,700, or 1.2 percent of the total, last year, compared with about 210,500, or 2.3 percent, in 2022, according to FlightAware data. Delays, however, remained stubbornly high last year, at about 21 percent of all flights.
More than two-thirds of all complaints last year concerned U.S. airlines, but a quarter concerned foreign airlines. Most of the rest concerned travel agencies and tour operators.
Complaints about the treatment of passengers with disabilities increased by more than a quarter compared to 2022. Discrimination complaints, while few in number, also rose sharply. Most were related to race or national origin.
Airlines receive many more complaints from travelers who don't know how to file a complaint with the government or don't bother to do so, but airlines don't publish those numbers.
The Transportation Department is revamping its complaint-receiving system, which the agency says will help it better oversee the airline industry. However, the department is currently releasing complaint figures many months late. It did not release figures for the second half of 2023 until Friday.
