Air travel is getting worse, judging from the number of consumer complaints.
Consumer complaints about airlines nearly doubled in the first three months of this year compared with the same period last year and kept soaring in April and May, the U.S. Transportation Department said Wednesday.
Those are the latest figures from the government. The Transportation Department said information about complaints has been delayed because there are so many of them to process.
The department said it received 24,965 complaints about airline service in the first three months of the year, up 88% from the first quarter of 2022. Consumers filed another 6,712 complaints in April, up 32% from a year earlier, and 6,465 in May, an increase of 49%.
Between the fake security theater treating everyone like absolute shit, the miniature airline seating designed to break knee caps, the over-crowded disease-spreading cabins, and the constant threat that the airline will kick you off the flight because they intentionally overbooked, airline travel is complete bullshit.
This is the result of airlines allowed to self regulated… and the TSA
Ahh the invisible hand of the market
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The worst part about airlines isn’t the actual flying. That’s safe and just as magical as the first time I flew in a plane when I was a kid. I still say “WOW!” out loud when we climb up through the cloud layer to that brilliant sunshine and perfect blue sky.
It’s all the parts except for moving through the air that suck. The seats, the other passengers, the airports, the fees, security probes, waiting in lines, uncomfortable and expensive terminals.
They took an amazing, magical experience that was a dream for thousands of years and enshittified it.
Adding on too, the pandemic-era increase in the airport enshittification experience.
Airports have restaurants and services, then the pandemic starts, and of course, a whole bunch of them close. Now a few years have passed, those services have more limited hours, and some never came back. It is much more difficult (and of course, expensive) to have access to services in airports than pre-2020. I’ve been through several hubs recently and it’s just flabbergasting how terrible it is to even try and find something basic like food.
Airline passengers are a captive audience trapped in an airport, especially during connecting flights. Airlines/airports should bear the cost of ensuring services are available any time flights are. They should bear the cost of keeping restaurants open later than 5PM. A quantity of airport services matching the passenger load should be available at flight times in respective terminals.
It’s easy to figure out, they know the manifests and schedules.
They should also have some sort of fallback process in place for when flights get trapped overnight in airports to take care of the passengers. It doesn’t need to be a free service, but at least doing something like: on call employees come in to run shops so passengers can buy goods.
It is dehumanizing. On the other hand, road trips are liberating.
I’d rather drive 18 hours than fly three hours. Mostly because the three hour flight is really more like six to nine hours because of getting to and from the airport, security, delays, etc.
I would love to see a reputable researcher try to calculate total lost revenues from travel avoidance.
Does anything substantial actually come from the complaints? Are we expected to see some sort of retribution against these airlines or reduced federal subsidies to them? I’m genuinely asking because there really isn’t any alternative for fast travel.
Here is a fun thing. No . If passangers truly wanted a better service they could fly in a buisness class but thats more expensive so they will tolerate shitter service for lower price beacuse what really matters to them is the destination.
Having a slightly roomier seat doesn’t solve all of the other problems with air travel. Namely the security, the crowds, the food, the other passengers, the rescheduling of flights.
Flying business/first is STILL shit now.
I typically fly first and my last trip American cancelled my scheduled comfortable connection and replaced it with one that was way too short. Predictably because of delays in my first leg my scheduled connecting flight was missed.
My wife and I were left with the options of not getting home that night or flying economy home. American compensated us with $15 vouchers.
It’s actually impressive that they’ve even made first class a shitty experience.
Imagine simping for airlines…
The cost difference between business and economy for domestic flights is insane recently. Last week I got an upsell ad in checkin to upgrade the first segment of my flight for 700 dollars. This was a 40 minute flight on a regional jet. The difference in seats on that flight is minimal - 2 extra inches of legroom, and such a short flight no service. But the reason that the difference is so high is because of supply and demand - people do want things to not be shitty but there aren’t enough not shit to go around.
Found the airline executive!
I’d like to see a breakdown on what the complaints are about. What percentage is about a flight being canceled or delayed, what percent is about being treated like crap by an airline employee, what percentage is a complaint about other customers, etc.
I recall seeing an article about this and the majority of complaints people had were about canceled/delayed flights AND the vast majority reason for those were 100 percent to do with issues the airplane carriers were at fault for.
I haven’t been in an airport since before lockdown. It’s been pretty great. It took a pandemic to make me realize that the act of traveling ruins the fun of visiting places.
I fly often for work and you are 100% correct. It feels like it gets worse every single time. Hence why I only fly drunk or high.
However, international I don’t see that much difference pre and post.
Let’s go back to water travel
I, for one, would like to see more water-based everything. Especially motion pictures. For instance, a movie about that swimming guy, what was his name? Aquatic Man was it?
Some shark movie maybe? Cheeks?
Ah yes, Shark Boy.
I prefer traveling by rail so much, it’s just far superior for so many trips. If only countries other than like a handful would invest in some truly good HSR, we could be living in the future. Instead we have the absolute garbage experience of flying. Yuck.
I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been able to afford it for years
haven’t been on an airplane in over 25 years. i wouldn’t want to nowadays, even if i could afford it.
always has been
Pete Buttigieg is part of the problem. He had his pick of posts, but he picked Secretary of Transportation, specifically so he could spread infrastructure money and attend ribbon-cuttings for four years, and avoid any serious matters that might blow back on him. Worse, he refuses to actually run the department like a serious leader, because he wants to keep big-business happy, so Wall Street donors fund his next presidential campaign.
A proper Secretary of Transportation would be all over the airlines and rail companies in this moment.
EDIT: I get the vibe that this is a hard truth, but you might spend a few minutes actually reading up on his tenure, the rail debacles, including the crushed strike, and the repeated lack of oversight on the airlines since 2021 as they have repeatedly gouged customers and cancelled thousands of flights. Buttigieg is studiously avoiding mixing it up on behalf of traveling Americans.
Yeah, Buttigieg is a total shill and always has been.
It’s interesting that even Lemmy seems to simp him. I didn’t say anything about him above that isn’t either an objective fact or reasonably deducible from the objective facts.
His father was a Gramsci expert, but somehow produced neolib Alfred E. Neumann, whose signature moves are verbal blackface, referencing a short paperwork trip as if he was at the Bulge, reducing gayness to a political prop, and assiduously avoiding doing anything to help regular Americans.
Dunno if you’ve seen the mini-documentary that came out about him several years ago but damn. Dude is an actual unfeeling sociopath. I feel so bad for his prop/husband.
It was probably the creepiest thing I saw that year. The dude is a monster.
Ok top five worst things he did. You got a microphone and I won’t argue with what you say.
He did work for McKinsey consulting which in itself is always a red flag.
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Neolibs. Buttigieg isn’t a leftist. He’s center-right.
Yeah let’s compare it to a list of things that Republicans have touched that have objectively improved:
- ?
You’re right, that’s way better :)
More travel, more complaints. Not rocket science.
There should be more rocket travel.
Alternate title; Judging from the level of air-line complaints, people are getting bitchier.
You’re providing an excellent example of your hypothesis.
I thought it was funny and I stand firmly by that.
Okay, but let’s be a little bit clearer. Are you implying that their random explitive is legit or of no real substance?
Cuz it sounds to me like you just enjoy sucking flyer’s dick.
I mean with the way the data is presented it definitely is agreeable that the rise in complaints is directly tied to the quality/performance of the flight industry.
But, on principle alone I refuse to openly accept correlation as a causation for two data sets, and always leave room for expansion and more dots to connect. Without that in play, it’s easy to convince anyone that all spurious correlations have a cause/effect relationship.
You don’t fly. Clearly.
I do, not monthly but enough to say that my own anecdotal experience would agree with yours and this article’s perspective. That doesn’t stop me from taking a jokingly objective stance. First comment I made was just the reverse angle of the same data set.
Come here. I got a punch for you. See the line?
It was pretty funny, but you’re joking about something that people are emotionally tied to so they’ll see any disagreement as sacrilege
