Worst U.S. Airlines

Every year a few airlines stand out among the rest as utterly dreadful in certain, or sometimes in all, categories. In all, the airline industry has actually been on the mend over the past few years, due largely to the recession, believe it or not. More people out of work means less travel for both business and pleasure and airlines have adjusted accordingly, cutting back on flight offerings and amenities. Fewer travelers and fewer flights means less congestion, less-frequent flight cancellations, fewer bags to lose, and shorter delays.

We hate to be the bearer of bad news, except when the bad news could potentially help save you from unfortunate travel situations: the chronic offenders still remain. Our list of the worst U.S. airlines takes into consideration consistently poor performance when it comes to flight delays, baggage loss, overbooking, and customer complaints.

Flight Delays

According to FlightStats.com, a flight-tracking and data collection service, overall on-time flight arrivals in the United States decreased in 2009 from 78.7 percent to 75.4 percent. And flight delay times decreased from an average of 57 minutes to 55 minutes, reversing a four-year uptick in increasingly longer flight delays.

However, not every airline performed up to par. Atlantic Southeast Airlines was only on time 28.8 percent of the time in 2009, according to the Airline Quality Report, which also listed American Airlines as one of its top flight-delay offenders. NATCA, the National Air Traffic Controller Association, named Comair Airlines in May 2010 as having the longest average flight delays of 14.07 minutes.

Overbooked Flights

While airlines have always taken to flight overbooking to maximize plane capacity, large cutbacks in demand from travelers have forced airlines to scale back on flight offerings. Overbooked flights have become an even greater problem as a result, which hasn’t boded well for either airlines or their passengers. As of 2008, airlines have been mandated by the government to pay $800 – double the amount of money they used to – to passengers who aren’t re-booked within in four hours.

It’s safe to say that Atlantic Southeast Airlines just doesn’t have the best track record. The Georgia-based connector airline also jumped to the top of this list, bumping one out of every 3,000 passengers. Comair and American Eagle Airlines respectively bumped 3.41 and 2.44 per every 10,000 passengers in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Aviation Enforcement and Proceedings.  Comair, however, got into some hot water last year for flight bumping when the ­­­­­Department of Transportation fined the airline $275,000 for failure to follow proper protocol to call for volunteers to give up their seats on overbooked flights in return, in most cases, for monetary compensation. The airline also reportedly submitted inaccurate reports on the number of passengers who were involuntarily denied boarding.

Lost Baggage

One thing’s for certain, airlines have hit the jackpot both in revenue and ratings from their new checked bag fees. In the first three months of this year alone, airlines collected 33 percent more revenue from checked bags, cashing in on nearly $770 million in baggage fees alone in 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Few travelers are flying and those who do take to the skies are definitely thinking twice about shelling out upwards of $35 to check their first bag. Fewer checked bags for airlines across the board means less chances to lose them.

This wasn’t always the case for Comair, which received 8.20 baggage complaints for every 1,000 passenger. That’s a pretty dismal number when you consider that the airline has one of the lowest passenger loads – 569,553 travelers in 2009. American Eagle Airlines didn’t perform much better in terms of baggage service, mishandling the most bags out of the 17 airlines listed in the Airline Quality Report for 2010. With the worst AQR score of all, American Airlines reportedly mishandles bags at a rate of 7.78 per 1,000 passengers.

Customer Complaints

The media did a great job of playing up the fee-charging game airlines decided to play this year. While it would seem that passengers across the country were sent into a tizzy, complaints filed with the government actually dropped 16 percent this year.

U.S. Airways had the most upset passengers, according to the AQR, but it wasn’t all attributed to fee charges. The airline struggled to complete a successful crew and equipment integration and began charging for soda, which wasn’t well received by its customers. Delta Airlines’ customer complaint score also jumped this year from 1.80 to 1.96 per 10,000 passengers.

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