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Americans have almost never been crankier about their dealings at the airport. The Department of Transportation announced Friday that it tallied up all the complaints it received last year about airlines and found that it received a near-record 96,853 of them — a 12% increase from 2022. There were so many complaints that the department had to push back the release of the data, which last year was delivered in April.
“The release of the submissions data in the Air Travel Consumer Report was delayed primarily because of the high volume of complaints against airlines and ticket agents received by the Office of Aviation Consumer Protection,” the agency said in a statement accompanying the data release.
The only year when flyers submitted more complaints was 2020, when the department received more than 102,000 missives. Officials said that they’re working to modernize their complaint-handling infrastructure, and because of that can’t break down which airlines are annoying consumers and why. In December 2022, for instance, half of all complaints were about Southwest Airlines, whose cancellation meltdown that month was so bad that the company had to pay a $140 million settlement to the government.
But, until the system gets fixed, “given the continued high volume of air travel service complaints concerning airlines and ticket agents, DOT has revised how it processes consumer complaints for efficiency which has resulted in less granular data being available in the ATCR.”