Narrative travels? Yes!
There has been precious little for U.S. air travellers to celebrate in recent decades, as the airlines have squeezed passengers into ever-smaller seats and imposed ever-more niggling fees for everything under sunlight.
The latest report by the DOT’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics is a glimmer of good news against a background that is bad-news.
According to the November “Air Travel Consumer Report,” released now, third-quarter incidents of involuntary denied boarding–bumping, in other wordsreached their lowest level since 1995, in 0.15 incidents per 10,000 passengers.
The bumping rate was the lowest since 1995 for the first nine months of 2017, at 0.39 events per 10,000 passengers.
The airlines’ mishandled-bag performance was significantly improved. For September, the mishandled-bag rate was 1.99 reports per 1,000 passengers, the lowest monthly rate because DOT started collecting mishandled baggage record info in September 1987.
The news wasn’t all good, naturally. September 2017 complaints about airline service increased 21.0 percent on the September 2016 levels, and complaints for the first nine months of 2017 grew up 3.8 percent over the same period this past year.
Reader Reality Check
Is the flight encounter improving or getting worse?