Airlines forced to deal with passenger complaints
By Darren Cronian on Thursday, July 24th, 2008

The Air Transport Users Council received fewer complaints from passengers in the last 12 months. I think that’s partly because passengers are becoming aware of EU legislations like rule 261/2004 and this means that airlines are having to deal with the complaints direct.

Airlines forced to deal with passenger complaints

Complaints

Out of the complaints sent in by writing 1982 were regarding cancellations, 875 were due to delays, and 624 were due to mishandled baggage. Interestingly, they were only 33 complaints due to disruptive passengers.

When you put it in context to the number of flights leaving the UK each year, the percentage of complaints is low. Expect these figures to increase though with the fiasco at Heathrow’s T5 and the decision to allow phone calls in-flight.

Increase in pre-flight complaints

On Travel Rants I can see an increasing trend of consumers complaining about airports, and the actual airline booking experience. I haven’t travelled a great deal this year, but from speaking with other consumers, family and friends, issues like flight delays seem to be less of an occurrence.

Airline booking user experience

They’re some horrible airline websites and low cost airline,Jet2 is a good example; the site is not user friendly, and basic features like a calendar to help choosing a date, not supplying flight information for the day before or after your chosen dates.

This should be standard on any airline booking website.

I’m looking forward to reading next years figures but I’d be interested to read your airline experiences


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3 responses to “Airlines forced to deal with passenger complaints”

Richard | 26 July, 2008 at 12:10 pm

It is worth pointing out that these stats are for UK flights, into the EC, not flights outside of Europe. Even so, who wants to write a complaint nowadays. I would have thought that the AUC would have provided email or an online way of complaining.

Or are they worried that this will drastically increase the number of complaints.

Rohan | 29 July, 2008 at 5:44 am

This lot need to get into the 21st century.
Who writes to complain nowadays. Why do they not offer email as a form of complaint?

Darren Cronian | 29 July, 2008 at 6:58 am

@ Rohan

It’s a good question, but I think Richard handled it. They would be swamped with all sorts of complaints. Consumers will only write if the complaint is serious enough I would suspect, where email is easier for us to complain about every aspect of air travel.

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