10 Most-Complained-About Airlines

Lost luggage and rude attendants may make you want to scream. Here are the U.S. airlines people complained about the most.
By Everett Potter

When Andrew Shrage discovered that his seatback TV wasn’t working on his JetBlue flight from Chicago to Boston, he didn’t wait until he landed to complain to the airline. Shrage, an editor at the website MoneyCrashers.com, tweeted @JetBlue before the plane took off, and the airline responded—with a $50 voucher.

Twitter may be changing how we complain to the airlines, but there’s still a lot to complain about. According to the latest Department of Transportation (DOT) report, the agency received nearly 3,600 complaints about airlines from January to June, 2011.

That's a lot of complaints, even if it is an improvement from the nearly 4,000 received over the same period last year. Not surprisingly, complaints about flight delays and cancellations, rude or incompetent service, and baggage handling led the list.



But what these stats don’t tell you is that legions of consumers are now voicing their complaints directly with the airlines via Twitter. And the airlines—or at least some of them—are listening, responding, and in some cases being proactive and fixing the issues.


Of course, anyone can tweet anything; lodging an official complaint with the DOT means you have a serious gripe. Here are the U.S. airlines the DOT says have had the most—and least—complaints.

#10 Skywest Airlines

.77 complaints per 100,000 passengers

The largest independently owned regional airline boasts a low complaint rate even though it flew almost 12 million passengers over the first six months of 2011.

#9 Atlantic Southeast Airlines

.96 complaints per 100,000 passengers

Atlantic Southeast will merge with ExpressJet later this year. Ideally, the newly formed airline will have a Twitter presence, because this airline, which operates close to 1,000 flights every day in the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean, does not.

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