Report: Airlines suffer more delays

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Airline hassles are on the rise: More passengers found themselves
bumped, their flights delayed or their bags lost last year than in
2005, according to the annual Airline Quality Rating report released
Monday.

The report does not include recent weather-related flight delays
such as the ones that left JetBlue and United Airlines planes idling
for hours on taxiways.

"They just don't get it yet," said Dean Headley, an associate
professor at Wichita State University who co-authored the study with
Brent D. Bowen of the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

One upside, researchers said, was that the overall number of airline
complaints has stabilized since hitting a five-year low in 2005.

Jet Blue, which rated highest on the list for the past three years,
was bumped out of the top slot by Hawaiian Airlines, which made its
debut on the list this year. The top three on the 18-airline list were
Hawaiian, JetBlue and AirTran, while the bottom three were, from worst
to best, Atlantic Southeast, American Eagle and Comair.

Industry spokesman David Castelveter blamed the majority of delays
on bad weather. Making matters worse, he said, more planes will be in
the air in coming years and the air traffic control system cannot
handle the growth.

"We're going to see more delays and those delays translate to
cancellations, mishandled bags and unhappy passengers," said
Castelveter, spokesman for the Air Transport Association, a trade group
for the major U.S. carriers. "It's not a pretty picture."

Congress needs to provide more money to update the system so it can
improve its handling of the increased traffic and weather problems,
Castelveter said.

The Airline Quality Rating report, compiled annually since 1991,
looked at 18 airlines and was based on Transportation Department
statistics. The research is sponsored by the Aviation Institute at
University of Nebraska at Omaha and Wichita State University.

Among the findings:

_Southwest had the lowest number of complaints in 2006, 0.18 per
100,000 passengers. United and US Airways tied for the most, 1.36 per
100,000 passenger.

_Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance (93.8 percent)
for 2006, followed by Frontier Airlines (80.7 percent) and Southwest
(80.2 percent). Atlantic Southeast Airlines had the worst on-time
performance (66 percent). On-time was defined as within 15 minutes of
the scheduled arrival time. Canceled and diverted flights counted as
late.

The biggest disappointment is mishandled bags, Headley said.

Last year, for every 1,000 passengers, 6.50 bags were lost, stolen
or damaged, compared with 6.06 in 2005. Hawaiian had the best baggage
handling performance; Atlantic Southeast the worst.

The increase in lost bags comes as at least one domestic carrier —
Spirit Airlines — plans a new fee for passengers who check their bags.
Come June, Spirit will charge $5 each for one or two checked bags if
the ticket was booked online and $10 each for passengers who do not
book online.

Headley does not think the idea will fly with consumers who long
have expected their ticket prices to include a checked bag or two. "It
will set off an absolute atomic bomb," he said.

Baggage problems is due to airlines cutting the number of employees
on their ground staffs over the past few years, Headley said at a news
conference Monday.

On-time performance, the report said, worsened last year, with 75.5
percent of flights arriving on time, compared with 77.3 percent in
2005.

JetBlue Airways took a hit in February, when passengers on 10
planes spent from five hours to 10 1/2 hours sitting on runways at John
F. Kennedy International Airport in New York because of icy weather and
gate congestion.

It took days for the airline to recover from the February storm
and resume normal operations. It led JetBlue to establish a customer
bill of rights promising vouchers to passengers who experience delays.

Some lawmakers want to pass legislation establishing certain
rights for air passengers. The airlines oppose the move. "Legislating
what is the right thing to do for a service provider usually won't
work," Headley said.

Overall, complaints about the airlines last year held steady at
about 0.88 complaints for every 100,000 passengers. Nearly half the
complaints were about flight problems or baggage.

"It just seems to me that consumer expectations have been
lowered," Headley said, explaining that at the end of the 1990s and in
2000 the numbers of complaints were much higher, even though problems
with baggage and delays were less frequent.

The study found an increase in the number of passengers bumped
or denied boarding because of oversold flights — 1.01 denied boardings
per 10,000 passengers last year, compared with 0.89 per 10,000 in 2005.
JetBlue had the lowest rate of bumped passengers; Atlantic Southeast
the highest.

___

On the Net:

Airline Quality Rating reports: http://www.aqr.aero