Air-travel complaints quadrupled between 2019 and 2022. Here's why.

By Emma Ockerman

'Unreliable air travel has ruined too many special times for too many Americans the last couple of years,' says the author of a new report

Consumer complaints about air travel are sky-high -- even though the number of people flying remains below the pre-pandemic levels of 2019, according to a report released Wednesday.

The volume of consumer complaints has quadrupled since that year, when 15,342 grievances were recorded, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data analyzed by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group. In 2022, there were 60,732 complaints, driven by refund woes, cancellations and delays, the report said.

That doesn't even include complaints from December, when widespread delays and cancellations caused by inclement weather and scheduling and staffing issues wrecked many people's holiday plans, the report noted. The analysis only spanned the first 11 months of the year.

"Unreliable air travel has ruined too many special times for too many Americans the last couple of years," Teresa Murray, U.S. PIRG Education Fund's consumer watchdog and the author of the report, said in a statement Wednesday. "The Christmas weekend disaster just exposed everything that's wrong with most of the airlines."

"The airlines have made short-sighted decisions about staffing, scheduling and technology," Murray added. "Bad weather can be a factor in cancellations but storms don't treat customers poorly: Airlines do. We wouldn't see this avalanche of complaints if airlines took better care of travelers."

The 60,732 complaints made in 2022 and analyzed in the report include grievances filed against U.S. airlines, foreign airlines, third-party booking sites, travel agents and more. U.S. airlines alone were the subject of 33,647 complaints between January and November of last year, the report said.

When it came to refund issues -- which made up 29% of all complaints last year -- more consumers also pointed fingers at travel agents and third-party online booking companies, according to the report.

Still, even though refund complaints were far above 2019 levels, they "fell significantly" in 2022 compared to the prior year, not including the most recent holiday season, the report said.

"For January through November 2022, there were 5,433 complaints against travelagents, compared with 436 for all of 2019," the report said. "The majority of complaints against travel agents last year concerned refunds."

Airlines, meanwhile, mishandled almost 3 million bags, wheelchairs or scooters last year, the report said. That tracks with widely reported instances of passengers who use wheelchairs reporting the damage or loss of their mobility devices while flying.

"In a nutshell, just about everything negative got worse in 2022: complaints,cancellations, delays, involuntary bumping and baggage handling -- all while the number of air travelers for the full year of 2022 was below 2019 levels," the report said.

However, while airlines notched 190,038 flight cancellations in the U.S. in 2022 -- which, apart from the early-pandemic travel chaos of 2020, was the highest volume of cancellations since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks -- those disruptions made up about 2.7% of all scheduled flights.

Complaints about cancellations and delays nonetheless tripled between January and November of last year when compared to all of 2019, the report said.

"It's no wonder since both the number of cancellations and cancellation rates last year increased over both 2021 and 2019," the report added.

Asked about the report, a Transportation Department spokesperson said in a statement that the agency is taking several actions to protect travelers, noting the department issued historic fines against airlines last year and helped "get hundreds of thousands of people hundreds of millions of dollars back."

Last year, Secretary Pete Buttigieg also urged airlines to cover rebooking costs and guarantee hotels or meals during cancellations and delays in cases where they were under the airline's control, the spokesperson said; 10 airlines now guarantee meals or free rebooking if an issue of theirs causes a delay or cancellation, while nine cover hotel stays.

Buttigieg has similarly spoken out against airlines that charge families to sit with one another.

"DOT remains committed to ensuring airline passengers are treated fairly and is concerned about recent flight cancellations and flight disruptions and difficulties families are experiencing in sitting together with no fees," the spokesperson said. "The department is currently investigating several domestic airlines to ensure that they are not engaging in unrealistic scheduling of flights."

The International Air Transport Association and the Air Line Pilots Association did not immediately return MarketWatch requests for comment.

-Emma Ockerman

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03-31-23 0944ET

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