Skift Take
It's not all about price. Customer service and reputation matters a lot when airfares are comparable and passengers don't soon forget bad experiences.
From mistake fares to tarmac delays, passengers responded with everything but silence as customer service-related complaints against U.S. airlines rose 33% during the past year.
Overall complaints are up nearly 60% year-over-year for U.S. airlines, and customer service specific complaints, 1,770 to be exact, represent 11.3 percent of the nearly 12,000 complaints U.S. carriers received between January and September, according to data released this week from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
That’s a 10% year-over-year increase in terms of customer service’s share of all complaints logged and American Airlines, as the largest U.S. carrier, received the most customer service complaints in absolute terms (315). But Spirit Airlines’ customer service performance (142 related complaints) was the worst in relative terms considering it had the most complaints, 11.3 per 100,000 passengers versus Frontier Airlines’ 9.35 and American’s 3.51.
Complaining is essentially a cornerstone of Spirit’s brand and the carrier actually embraced it as part of its Bare Fare campaign rolled out earlier this year. Between January and September the carrier also received 601 complaints for flight problems, 193 for ticketing/reservations/boarding, 190 for baggage, and 173 for fares–the latter its business’ backbone.
Fare- and fee-related complaints are up 62% year-over-year for U.S. carriers, coinciding with mistake fare mishaps from both United and American Airlines in 2015, with the Department of Transportation siding with United but requiring American to honor $0 fares from the U.S. to China.
Skift recently looked at what it takes to successfully manage an airline customer service Twitter account, and following are two charts breaking down complaints against U.S. carriers by sub-categories so far this year:
Source: U.S. Department of Transportation
Top 10 U.S. Airlines Receiving Most Complaints, January-September 2015
Airline | Flight Problems | Oversales | Res/Tkng/Boarding | Fares | Refunds | Baggage | Customer Service | Other Complaints | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
American Airlines | 775 | 105 | 367 | 386 | 293 | 439 | 315 | 215 | 2,895 |
United Airlines | 680 | 87 | 227 | 183 | 130 | 342 | 286 | 188 | 2,123 |
Spirit Airlines | 601 | 42 | 193 | 173 | 149 | 190 | 142 | 68 | 1,558 |
Frontier Airlines | 307 | 15 | 146 | 63 | 77 | 134 | 109 | 42 | 893 |
Delta Air Lines | 298 | 41 | 91 | 51 | 12 | 102 | 103 | 102 | 800 |
US Airways | 236 | 52 | 115 | 50 | 59 | 93 | 82 | 64 | 751 |
Southwest Airlines | 204 | 13 | 50 | 12 | 29 | 132 | 75 | 73 | 588 |
Allegiant Air | 167 | 4 | 138 | 44 | 58 | 33 | 56 | 34 | 534 |
JetBlue Airways | 80 | 5 | 20 | 20 | 19 | 34 | 44 | 19 | 241 |
SkyWest Airlines | 129 | 4 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 15 | 5 | 160 |
Source: U.S. Department of Transportation
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Tags: complaints, spirit airlines
Photo credit: Spirit Air CEO Ben Baldanza (L) and a puppet chatting about the carrier's Bare Fare campaign earlier this year. Despite trying to be clear about its offerings and advertisements, its passengers are still complaining. Spirit Airlines