Main Beach in East Hampton, New York, is number one on the 2013 list of Top 10 Beaches produced annually by coastal expert Stephen P. Leatherman, also known as "Dr. Beach," director of Florida International University's Laboratory for Coastal Research. KKM Photo / Associated Press

This may be hard to believe in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, but an annual list of the best beaches in the country has a New York beach ranked No. 1.

Less surprisingly, that beach is in East Hampton, the vacation playground for the rich and famous.

In an announcement that coincides annually with the unofficial start of summer, coastal expert Stephen P. Leatherman on Friday released the 23rd version of his Top 10 Beach List, placing Main Beach in East Hampton at the top.

“The thing about the Hamptons is that people are so proud of their beaches out there,” Leatherman told The Associated Press in an interview in advance of the release of his list. “People pick up their litter there, the bathrooms are clean; they provide good services.”

Leatherman, who goes by the nickname Dr. Beach, visited Main Beach earlier this month. He said that unlike many beaches farther to the west and in New Jersey, the beaches on eastern Long Island saw less erosion and flooding from the effects of Superstorm Sandy.

“Considering the magnitude of the storm, people will be very pleased to see that Main Beach is the way they remember it,” he said.

Leatherman, a professor at Florida International University in Miami, has visited beaches around the world and uses criteria like water and sand quality, as well as safety and environmental management, to compile his annual list. Once a beach reaches the pinnacle of No. 1, it is retired from future consideration, he said.

Coopers Beach in nearby Southampton, N.Y., was the No. 1 pick in the 2010 survey. Sarasota, Fla.’s Siesta Beach was tops in 2011 and Coronado Beach in California earned the top spot in 2012.

The other nine on Leatherman’s 2013 list after Main Beach are: Kahanamoku Beach, Waikiki, Hawaii; St. George Island State Park, Fla.; Hamoa Beach, Maui, Hawaii; Waimanalo Bay State Park, Oahu, Hawaii; Barefoot Beach Preserve County Park, Bonita Springs, Fla.; Cape Florida State Park, Key Biscayne, Fla.; Cape Hatteras, Outer Banks, N.C.; Coast Guard Beach, Cape Cod, Mass.; and Beachwalker Park, Kiawah Island, S.C.

East Hampton village residents have free access to Main Beach, although parking permits are required from May 15 to Sept. 15. Non-residents can buy parking passes at $25 per day but they are limited in number, with only 40 non-resident daily parking passes sold on weekends and holidays.

Max Scainetti, a lifelong East Hampton resident, said the tiny grains of tan sand and the cleanliness of the beach are two of the things that make Main Beach special.

“This is one of the best beaches in the country and I’ve been to a lot of beaches,” Scainetti said. “I think basically it’s a lot to do with the sand. A lot of Long Island beaches tend to be rocky where these are more sandy beaches.”

Javier Baldo, an East Hampton cook, said he has visited Main Beach regularly for about eight years.

“It’s fairly civilized. It doesn’t get too crowded. The water is delicious,” he said. Delicious? “It’s really great water, it’s really clean. You just have a lot of space.”

Baldo said celebrities are sometimes seen at the beach, but people generally keep to themselves.

“It’s quiet, there’s no loud music playing. It’s obviously very safe; great lifeguards. There are really great lifeguards. They’re actually fit and very well experienced. That’s a big thing, just the safety,” he said.

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A Virgin America Airbus A-320 at the gate at Los Angeles International Airport. SWF Photography / Flickr

In an era where fliers complain air travel can feel like riding a city bus in the sky, Virgin America soared above the competition in Consumer Reports’ airline rankings released Wednesday.

“Virgin America is a cut above the rest,” Consumer Reports senior editor Amanda Walker told NBC News. “People were very happy with their flights on Virgin.”

… Survey respondents said they liked the check-in, flight attendants, the in-flight entertainment options, cabin cleanliness and seat comfort. Virgin was also the only airline to get top marks for baggage handling.

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A course at Ryugin restaurant in Tokyo. Andrew Kim / Flickr

In 2007, Michelin published its first-ever restaurant guide to Tokyo and awarded the city more stars than even Paris. Jean-Luc Naret, Michelin’s editorial director at the time, was emphatic: Tokyo, he said, was “by far the world’s capital of gastronomy,” a comment that seemed as much an indictment of Paris, and of France, as it was a nod to Tokyo.

Back then, it was no secret that the French had lost their edge in the kitchen, Bloomberg Pursuits will report in its Summer 2013 issue. “The fear is that the muse has migrated,” The New Yorker magazine’s Adam Gopnik wrote of the perceived crisis in French cuisine as early as 1997.

In 2009, I published a book on the topic called Au Revoir to All That, which chronicled the many ways in which France’s food culture had deteriorated over the preceding two decades — from the disappearance of traditional bistros and brasseries to the country’s seemingly insatiable appetite for Le Big Mac. (By 2008, France had become the second-most-profitable market for McDonald’s Corp., after the U.S., according to the company.)

With its 2013 guide, Michelin has again affirmed that the “muse” has relocated to Tokyo: The French food bible awarded three stars, its highest rating, to 14 restaurants (compared with only 10 in Paris) and dished out a total of 323 stars — more than to any other city in the Michelin firmament — to 281 establishments overall.

Capital of gastronomy

“Japanese gourmet cooking is even more creative, inspired and inventive than in the past,” declared Michael Ellis, Naret’s successor.

I traveled to Tokyo to see for myself if it deserved all those stars — if it really was “the world’s capital of gastronomy.” Many thousands of calories later, I have come to understand why Michelin’s famously anonymous inspectors might have felt such an affinity for the city.

It turns out that the same qualities that put French cuisine on top — impeccable ingredients, dedication to craft, an unwavering quest for perfection — are also the cornerstones of Japan’s food culture.

For a disillusioned Francophile, Tokyo is an exhilarating discovery. It’s not the new Paris; it’s Paris the way it used to be. And the Gallic connection runs deeper than you might imagine.

Distinctive style

It’s the end of my first full day in Tokyo, and all that neon has left me in a vaguely hallucinatory state — a feeling amplified by the otherworldly sushi I am eating at Sushi-Sho, a minuscule restaurant of just 10 seats arranged around a brightly lit bar.

Chef Keiji Nakazawa is one of Japan’s foremost sushi masters, having helped revive a distinctive style of sushi called edomae, in which the fish is aged — sometimes for as long as two weeks — before being served. “Completely fresh fish doesn’t have any taste,” he explains.

Nakazawa, an energetic 50-year-old dressed in crisp chef whites, his undershirt visible just below the neck, maintains a spirited dialogue with diners as he nimbly fashions each piece of sushi — gently shaping the warm rice, swiftly applying a dab of freshly ground wasabi, laying the fish on top and lightly coating it with soy sauce.

Upon placing each piece in front of me, he tells me where that particular fish came from (the tuna was caught near Nagasaki; the eel, off Osaka) and how it was caught (line or net). Nakazawa says he needs this information in order to properly age and serve the fish.

Obsessive attention

To illustrate the point, he mentions another fish he’s using: golden eye snapper. He prefers to serve it with the skin on, but to do that, he says, he has to know the depth at which the snapper was caught; below 200 meters (655 feet), the water pressure renders the skin too tough. What I don’t yet realize, but am about to discover, is that this obsessive attention to detail is nothing out of the ordinary in Tokyo. It’s typical — and not just of the high-end restaurants.

One morning, I have dessert for breakfast at Patisserie Hidemi Sugino, which is rightly considered Tokyo’s finest pastry shop and whose namesake chef is so protective of his ineffably delicate creations that he will sell only to those who agree to consume them within 90 minutes of purchase. Some pastries he won’t even let out the door; they must be eaten in the adjacent tearoom.

Later that day, I go to Toritama, a basement-level yakitori joint in Tokyo’s Kagurazaka district. Yakitori is skewered grilled chicken, and there’s a lot of it in Tokyo. But in contrast to most yakitori restaurants, Toritama performs its own butchering and makes full use of the bird.

First-rate ingredients

In fact, it serves 37 parts, including six different cuts from the thigh alone. (The restaurant helpfully provides an anatomy chart so that diners can pick out the parts they want.) It cooks the chicken over bincho charcoal, considered the gold standard, and the results are sensational.

First-rate charcoal, first-rate ingredients — the quality of the fish, fruits, poultry, meats and vegetables in Tokyo is extraordinary; $100 melons and $180 mangoes are not unheard-of. What’s more, in contrast to the sometimes absentee chefs of Paris — presiding over restaurants that span the world — Tokyo’s top chefs are generally tethered to their kitchens. Not only that: You get to watch them work. Counter seating is the norm — and not only for sushi.

No meal better captures the essence of Tokyo dining than the lunch I have at a tempura restaurant called Raku-tei. It has two Michelin stars, but you’d never guess that from its appearance.

Understated appearance

It’s located on the ground floor of a beige, five-story eyesore of an apartment building on a quiet side street in central Tokyo. When I walk in, Shuji Ishikura, its 77-year-old chef, is on his hands and knees, pushing a case of wine under the small wooden bench that passes for the waiting area.

For two hours, I quietly watch this elderly master, aided only by his sister and a single apprentice, ply his craft — gently depositing each vegetable and piece of fish in the batter, then the cooking oil (which he changes after every service) and finally onto hand-cut tempura paper.

Ishikura has raised fried food to the level of haute cuisine. But my lunch at Raku-tei begins with raw fish: a sashimi appetizer consisting of flounder and toro (tuna belly). When I compliment Ishikura on the astonishing quality of the fish, he volunteers that he’s about to replace the flounder with sea bream. That’s because flounder mating season has commenced and many of the nutrients in the fish will now be devoted to reproduction, which means the flesh won’t be as flavorful, he says.

Cross-pollination

The quality of Tokyo’s ingredients and the singular dedication of its chefs rival Paris of old. But Tokyo also resembles the City of Light in another way: It’s a source of fabulous French food, the result of a half-century of culinary cross-pollination between France and Japan.

This exchange began in the 1960s, when leading French chefs such as Raymond Oliver, Paul Bocuse and Jean and Pierre Troisgros regularly traveled to Japan and came away with ideas about cooking, presentation and service that helped inspire France’s nouvelle cuisine revolution. Other French chefs went to Japan and stayed.

Thanks to this beneficent invasion, the Japanese developed a passion for French food, which ultimately led many young chefs to pursue careers in it. By the 1990s, the finest restaurants in Paris were teeming with Japanese trainees, and there are now several Japanese chefs cooking Michelin-starred French fare in France.

Second home

Others who trained in France returned to Japan and opened French restaurants, bakeries and wine bars there. Most of these are in Tokyo, which has become a kind of second home for French cuisine.

That point was dramatically underscored when Michelin, in its inaugural Tokyo guide, awarded three stars to a restaurant called Quintessence, whose chef, Shuzo Kishida, now 33, thus became the first Japanese-born French chef to receive Michelin’s highest rating.

Although my meal at Quintessence is good, it isn’t the best French food I have in Tokyo. That distinction belongs to a restaurant called L’Effervescence. It currently has one Michelin star; it ought to have two, and possibly three. Shinobu Namae, the 40-year-old chef, trained under the brilliant French chef Michel Bras and also did a stint with the even more esteemed Heston Blumenthal at three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck in Bray, England.

Duck breast

Namae’s food shows Bras’s influence (a beautifully composed salad containing 37 different vegetables) but also has some playful, Blumenthal-like touches (a demitasse of tea in which one side is cold and the other hot, with nothing separating the two sides).

The dish that floors me, though, is duck breast served with blood orange, girolle mushrooms and daikon radish. The duck is flawlessly cooked and seasoned, and its interplay with the citrus, mushrooms and radish is masterful. It’s a dish that would stand out even at a top-tier restaurant in France.

Which raises a delicate question: Having already eclipsed Paris in Michelin stars, could Tokyo chefs one day eclipse the French at their own cuisine?

I put the question to pastry chef Sugino, who trained in France and is one of only four Japanese members of the prestigious Relais Desserts, an association of the world’s top pastry makers who meet regularly to exchange ideas.

’Losing the basics’

Choosing his words carefully, he notes that pastry shops in France are having difficulty finding young people willing to put in the time and effort required to learn the craft. He also says that even top French patisseries are now taking shortcuts — by using stabilizers in their desserts, for instance.

“They are losing the basics,” Sugino says. “It is possible that, 10 or 20 years from now, the French will have lost the art of pastry but that it will live on in Tokyo, in Japan.”

For this disillusioned Francophile, it’s a strange but gratifying thought.

After a week of gorging myself on Tokyo, I am persuaded: It is the most dynamic food city in the world. And the only outstanding question is: How soon can I return?

10 Most Wanted

No culinary tour of contemporary Tokyo is complete without a trip to these dining destinations.

Ginza Kojyu A three-Michelin-starred restaurant specializing in kaiseki, the most refined form of Japanese cuisine. Chef Toru Okuda’s presentations are as spectacular as the food. 81-3-6215-9544; kojyu.jp

Ishikawa Hideki Ishikawa, 48, adheres to the kaiseki protocol (appetizers, sashimi, soup, grilled fish, meat, rice, pickles and tea) but eschews the ornate plating typical of the genre. He calls it “Ishikawa style”; whatever you call it, the food at this three-star spot is sensational. 81-3-5225-0173; kagurazaka- ishikawa.co.jp

Kaduya Ramen is more than a food; it’s a Japanese obsession. This small, brightly lit restaurant is renowned for its homemade noodles and subtle, deeply flavored broth. 81-3-3716-2071

L’Effervescence Shinobu Namae’s one-Michelin-starred dishes illustrate the Japanese mastery of French cuisine. The setting, cater-cornered to a Shinto temple, is elegant and convivial. 81-3-5766-9500; leffervescence.jp

Patisserie Hidemi Sugino It’s perhaps the finest pastry shop in Tokyo — better, even, than celebrated French imports such as Pierre Herme. 81-3-3538- 6780

Raku-tei Shuji Ishikura, 77, produces ethereally light tempura dishes at his tiny, serene two-starred eatery. 81-3-3585-3743

Ryugin At this three-starred restaurant, Seiji Yamomoto updates the traditional kaiseki format with avant-garde flourishes — a frozen candy apple filled with apple powder, for instance. 81-3- 3423-8006; nihonryori-ryugin.com

Shima Chef Nabu Oshima is a wizard with hand-rubbed Wagyu; he also cures his own salmon at this small, clubby steakhouse. 81-3- 3271-7889

Sushi-Sho Keiji Nakazawa is among Japan’s most innovative sushi masters, aging the fish for up to two weeks. Forget what you think you know about sushi. 81-3-3351-6387

Toritama Unlike most yakitori joints, Toritama butchers its own chickens, uses every last part of the bird and grills them over top- quality bincho charcoal. 81-3-6457-5131; toritama.net

Michael Steinberger is author of Au Revoir to All That. The opinions expressed are his own.

Editors: Joel Weber, Laura Colby. To contact the writer responsible for this story: Michael Steinberger at mhsteinberger@gmail.com. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Ted Moncreiff at tmoncreiff@bloomberg.net. To write a letter to the editor, send an e-mail to bloombergmag@bloomberg.net. 

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Alan Levine / Flickr.com

– First, most U.S. airports are among the oldest in the world, with many facilities dating back to the 1960s.

– Second, the majority of U.S. airport infrastructure is geared toward domestic travel. There is a huge disparity in the cost/revenue structure between domestic travel and international travel, and it shows in the facilities that serve them.

– Third, most of the world’s best airports are owned and operated by national governments…Airports in the U.S. are owned and operated by a patchwork quilt of city, county, and state governments.

– Finally, numerous international gateways in the U.S,…results in a lack of national pride and focus on international facilities in the U.S.

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Signage outside of El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain. E. Calamar / Flickr

El Celler de Can Roca, a Spanish family establishment, last night headed the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, toppling Noma.

The awards for Restaurant magazine, sponsored by San Pellegrino and Acqua Panna, are selected in a vote by food writers, chefs and gourmets. El Celler, run by three brothers north of Barcelona, spent two years in second place behind Copenhagen’s Noma, which now ranks second.

“The Roca brothers’ restaurant has gained global acclaim for its combination of Catalan dishes and cutting-edge techniques and the passion that they share for hospitality,” the award organizers said in an e-mailed release.

Osteria Francescana, chef Massimo Bottura’s modern Italian restaurant in Modena, rises to third. Mugaritz, in San Sebastian, Spain, slips to fourth. Eleven Madison Park, New York, jumps five places to fifth.

The rankings are compiled by aggregating the votes of 26 regional panels, consisting of a chairman or chairwoman and 35 other people. (I head the U.K. and Ireland panel.) Each member picks seven restaurants, including at least three from outside his or her region, for a total of 936 votes worldwide.

The Top 10 is rounded out with D.O.M. (Sao Paulo), Dinner by Heston Blumenthal (London), Arzak (San Sebastian), Steirereck (Vienna) and Vendome (Bergisch Gladbach, Germany).

“El Celler believes in free-style cooking, with a commitment to the avant-garde, but remaining faithful to the memory of different generations on the family’s ancestors,” the release said. “Joan heads up the kitchen, Jordi is head pastry chef and Josep is head sommelier, in charge of front of house.”

Adria Season

The brothers’ passion for food began in Can Roca, the bar their parents managed in Taiala, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Girona, according to El Celler’s website. Joan and Josep opened El Celler next door in 1986 before Joan spent a season with Ferran Adria at El Bulli in 1989.

El Celler won its first Michelin star in 1995, its second in 2002 and the third in 2009. Among the dishes that have made it famous is Iberian suckling pig with pepper sauce and garlic and quince terrine. The tasting menu costs 130 euros ($170).

If you want to go, act fast: Rene Redzepi of Noma says that the day after his restaurant won the award, 100,000 people tried to book online, enough to fill Noma for years.

The World’s 50 Best results are often controversial and this year’s list will do nothing to enhance their reputation in France. The highest French entry is Alain Passard’s Paris restaurant, L’Arpege, at 16th. Most of France’s grand gastronomic establishments don’t make the list at all.

Ducasse Thanks

Passard and Joel Robuchon were the only chefs in the Top 50 who didn’t attend. Others came from as far afield as Australia, Japan, Mexico and Peru. Alain Ducasse, who won for lifetime achievement, sent his thanks in a video message.

The chefs attended after-parties late into the night. Blumenthal, William Humm, Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud and the Roca brothers were among those in the basement bar at Roka. Across town, Redzepi and fellow Nordic chef Magnus Nilsson were at Clove Club, along with Bottura, who was dancing.

In the U.S. Per Se was at 11th was followed by Alinea (15th), Le Bernardin (19th), Daniel (29th) and French Laundry (47th).

In the U.K., the Ledbury was 13th, the Fat Duck 33rd, Viajante 59th, Hedone 70th, St. John 71st and Pollen Street Social 84th.

The awards started in 2002 as a feature in Restaurant magazine. Ex-editor Joe Warwick said he sent e-mails to chefs and journalists to pick their favorite places. U.K. venues did well: Gordon Ramsay was second and the Ivy eighth. El Bulli won.

Chefs Gather

The awards have grown into the biggest annual gathering of chefs from around the world. While the culinary masters are in London, they take part in other events.

This year, the leading Italian chefs prepared a lunch at Harrods. Others held an event at the Royal Geographical Society to promote their now book, “Cook It Raw.”

The Roca brothers hosted a breakfast at the Mandarin Oriental to announce a culinary opera — El Somni — which they are creating with the video artist Franc Aleu as well as musicians, painters, dancers and other artists.

There will be 12 acts, in which 12 diners will eat 12 courses. The premiere is in Barcelona next month, when the guests will include the chef Ferran Adria as well as Harold McGee, the American author whose writings on the science of food have inspired Heston Blumenthal and other chefs.

Previous winners are: El Bulli (2002, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009); French Laundry (2003, 2004); Fat Duck (2005); and Noma (2010, 2011, 2012).

Richard Vines is the chief food critic for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. He is U.K. and Ireland chairman of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards. Opinions expressed are his own.

Muse highlights include Hephzibah Anderson on books; and Greg Evans and Craig Seligman on film.

Editors: Mark Beech and Farah Nayeri.

To contact the writer on the story: Richard Vines in London at rvines@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff at mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net.

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Taxis lined up outside of Tokyo's Narita Airport. vetaturfumare / Flickr

Thrifty travellers would do well to avoid taxis from Tokyo’s Narita Airport, new research suggests.

A taxi from the main international airport serving the Japanese capital into the city centre could set you back almost £200, the study indicated.

The 41-mile journey, was not however, the most expensive when ranked on cost by distance travelled. That slot fell to Copenhagen, where a five-mile trip costs an average of £34.08, which works out at £6.82 per mile.

The research ranked the cost of taxi journeys from major international airports in Europe and the rest of the world, to city centres, including some popular destinations for British holidaymakers.

In Europe, researchers found the overall most expensive taxi ride from the airport was from Oslo Gardermoen airport, with a journey costing £73.45.

Taxis from Sofia airport in Bulgaria to the city centre were the most affordable, at £2.17, followed by Bucharest in Romania (£4.79), and Istanbul (£6.01).

Beyond Europe, the cheapest airport to city centre taxi rides are found at Delhi’s Indira Ghandi International, costing just £2.69 for the 10-mile journey. At Thailand’s Suvernabhumi airport to Bangkok central, an 18-mile taxi ride costs £5.63.

Only overseas airports were included in the study. Taxis from Heathrow would have figured fifth in the most expensive table (see below), with a 15-mile journey costing an average of around £57.

The research was carried out by Moneycorp, a currency exchange company.

Most expensive cities for airport taxis by cost per mile

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Flight attendants walk near Sapporo Okadama Airport in Japan. Miki Yoshihito / Flickr

If you’re considering a career as a flight attendant, you may want to think again. Of all jobs in the travel, tourism and hospitality sector, flight attendants came in dead last on CareerCast’s 2013 Jobs Rated Report, which assessed positions based on pay, stress, physical demands and future prospects.

“High stress, low pay and a shrinking job market all contribute to flight attendant’s inclusion among the worst jobs of 2013,” CareerCast explained. “As airlines continue to consolidate and reduce staff, this is unlikely to change.”

As a whole, jobs in the travel, tourism and hospitality industry didn’t fare well on the 2013 report, with only one cracking the top 100 (event coordinator).

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Here now, Gabrielle Quiñónez Denton & Greg Denton (Ox, Portland), Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood, St. Helena), Paul Berglund (The Bachelor Farmer, Minneapolis), Daniel Rose (Spring, Paris), Tim Maslow (Strip-T’s, Boston), Chris Shepherd (Underbelly, Houston), Anthony Martin (Tru, Chicago), Andrea Reusing (Lantern, Raleigh), and Jeff McInnis (Yardbird, Miami) share where they like to grab burgers and why.

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Skytrax released its annual World Airport Awards this week with one airport taking an impressive leap to the top. Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport shook up the top three regime for the first time in six years to take its spot as the world’s third-best airport following Singapore Changi and Incheon International. It was also the only non-Asian airport in the top five.

Schipol also arrived in the top five of several superlative categories otherwise dominated by Asian airports including best airports for dining, leisure amenities, transit airport, and shopping.

Copenhagen, Heathrow, and Munich also make appearances in the winning category sets, but only twice each, whereas Amsterdam appears four times.

Skytrax credits the airport’s new ranking to its efficiency:

Schiphol alongside KLM has developed and implemented an effective self-service transfer process and this has resulted in significant improvements in passenger feedback. Whilst staff service remains an important feature, efficiency is also crucial and Schiphol has managed to create an environment of good efficiency and effective staff service.

The real secret to the top three airports’ success is humanizing the waiting experience. They add nature to the hubs’ stale air: Schipol’s Airport Park lets flyers spend time on outside terrace while Changi and Incheon fill terminals with live tropical gardens. Schipol and Incheon offer families baby care lounges and playgrounds; and it’s no wonder Changi takes first when considering its spa showers, aviation gallery, and big screen theater.

The airports could be considered cities as much as  transportation hubs and appropriately provide practical tools and entertainment and wellness experiences for their travelers.

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In this Thursday, Sept. 27, 2012 photo, passengers travel through an airport in Miami. Lynne Sladky / Associated Press

U.S. airlines scored their second best performance last year in the more than two decades that researchers have been measuring airline quality, with Virgin America the leader, says an annual report released Monday (full report embedded below).

The report ranked the 14 largest U.S. airlines based on on-time arrivals, mishandled bags, consumer complaints and passengers who were bought tickets but were turned away because flights were over booked.

Airline performance in 2012 was the second highest in the 23 years that Wichita State University at Omaha in Nebraska and Purdue University in Indiana have tracked the performance of airlines. The airline’s best year was 2011.

Virgin America, headquartered in Burlingame, Calif., did the best job on baggage handling and had the second-lowest rate of passengers denied seats due to overbookings. United Airlines, whose consumer complaint rate nearly doubled last year, had the worst performance. United has merged with Continental Airlines, but has had rough spots in integrating the operations of the two carriers.

The number of complaints consumers filed with the Department of Transportation overall surged by one-fifth last year to 11,445 complaints, up from 9,414 in 2011.

“Over the 20 some year history we’ve looked at it, this is still the best time of airline performance we’ve ever seen,” said Dean Headley, a business professor at Wichita State University in Kansas, who has co-written the annual report. The best year was 2011, which was only slightly better than last year, he said.

Despite those improvements, it’s not surprising that passengers are getting grumpier, Headley said. Carriers keep shrinking the size of seats in order to stuff more people into planes. Empty middle seats that might provide a little more room have vanished. And more people who have bought tickets are being turned away because flights are overbooked.

“The way airlines have taken 130-seat airplanes and expanded them to 150 seats to squeeze out more revenue, I think, is finally catching up with them,” he said. “People are saying, ‘Look, I don’t fit here. Do something about this.’ At some point airlines can’t keep shrinking seats to put more people into the same tube,” he said.

The industry is even looking at ways to make today’s smaller-than-a-broom closet toilets more compact in the hope of squeezing a few more seats onto planes.

“I can’t imagine the uproar that making toilets smaller might generate,” Headley said, especially given that passengers increasingly weigh more than they use to. Nevertheless, “will it keep them from flying? I doubt it would.”

The rate of complaints per 100,000 passengers also rose to 1.43 last year from 1.19 in 2011.

In recent years, some airlines have shifted to larger planes that can carry more people, but that hasn’t been enough to make up for an overall reduction in flights.

The rate at which passengers with tickets were denied seats because planes were full rose to 0.97 denials per 10,000 passengers last year, compared with 0.78 in 2011.

It used to be in cases of overbookings that airlines usually could find a passenger who would volunteer to give up a seat in exchange for cash, a free ticket or some other compensation with the expectation of catching another flight later that day or the next morning. Not anymore.

“Since flights are so full, there are no seats on those next flights. So people say, ‘No, not for $500, not for $1,000,’ ” said airline industry analyst Robert W. Mann Jr.

Regional carrier SkyWest had the highest involuntary denied-boardings rate last year, 2.32 per 10,000 passengers.

But not every airline overbooks flights in an effort to keep seats full. JetBlue and Virgin America were the industry leaders in avoiding denied boardings, with rates of 0.01 and 0.07, respectively.

United Airlines’ consumer complaint rate was 4.24 complaints per 100,000 passengers. Southwest had the lowest rate, at 0.25. Southwest was among five airlines that lowered complaint rates last year compared to 2011. The others were American Eagle, Delta, JetBlue and US Airways.

Consumer complaints were significantly higher in the peak summer travel months of June, July and August when planes are especially crowded.

“As airplanes get fuller, complaints get higher because people just don’t like to be sardines,” Mann said.

The complaints are regarded as indicators of a larger problem because many passengers may not realize they can file complaints with the Transportation Department, which regulates airlines.

At the same time that complaints were increasing, airlines were doing a better job of getting passengers to their destinations on time.

The industry average for on-time arrival rates was 81.8 percent of flights, compared with 80 percent in 2011. Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance record, 93.4 percent in 2012. ExpressJet and American Airlines had the worst records with only 76.9 percent of their planes arriving on time last year.

The industry’s on-time performance has improved in recent years, partly due to airlines’ decision to cut back on the number of flights.

“We’ve shown over the 20 years of doing this that whenever the system isn’t taxed as much — fewer flights, fewer people, less bags — it performs better. It’s when it reaches a critical mass that it starts to fracture,” Headley said.

The industry’s shift to charging for fees for extra bags, or sometimes charging fees for any bags, has significantly reduced the rate of lost or mishandled bags. Passengers are checking fewer bags than before, and carrying more bags onto planes when permitted.

The industry’s mishandled bag rate peaked in 2007 at 7.01 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers. It was 3.07 in 2012, down from 3.35 bags the previous year.

The report’s ratings are based on statistics kept by the department for airlines that carry at least 1 percent of the passengers who flew domestically last year. The research is sponsored by Purdue University in Indiana and by Wichita State.

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