Maybe May wasn’t such a good month for the airlines after all

by Christopher Elliott

Was May a good-news month for the airline industry? You might be forgiven for thinking so, based on the glowing coverage of yesterday’s government announcement that airline on-time performance had improved.

Most news outlets and blogs — with perhaps the possible exception of the Associated Press — bought Uncle Sam’s premise that May was indeed a happy month for the airline industry.

It’s nonsense. In fact, in some cases it was apparent that the reporters or bloggers failed to review the government data, and instead relied on the press release.

Let’s have a look at a few of the things the government said:

Mishandled baggage. The U.S. carriers reporting flight delays and mishandled baggage data posted a mishandled baggage rate of 4.59 reports per 1,000 passengers in May, an improvement over both May 2007’s rate of 5.94 and April 2008’s 4.99 rate.

However … it doesn’t mention American Eagle’s dismal mishandled baggage rate of more than 9 bags per 1,000, nor does it say what the government plans to do about its atrocious record, now that the airline (via parent company American Airlines) is charging for the first checked bag.

Complaints about airline service. In May, the department received 885 complaints about airline service from consumers, down 4.8 percent from the 930 complaints filed in May 2007 and 20.5 percent fewer than the total of 1,113 received in April 2008.

However … it doesn’t say anything about Delta Air Lines. Remember, Delta wants permission to merge with Northwest Airlines. But it’s the most complained-about airline on the list, with 127 complaints for the month, up by about a third from a year ago. Is the government going to reward its incompetence by approving Delta’s request. (Answer: of course!)

Other complaints.The report also contains a tabulation of complaints filed with DOT in May against specific airlines regarding the treatment of passengers with disabilities. The Department received a total of 39 disability-related complaints in May, up 14.7 percent from the 34 filed in May 2007 and 8.3 percent more than the 36 complaints received in April 2008.

However … it doesn’t mention that the complaints are focused on several airlines, including Continental, Mesaba, Southwest and United. If the DOT is getting complaints about these carriers, what is it doing to stop this apparent discrimination?

In this age of drive-by journalism, it’s often worth taking a look at the actual numbers before writing the headline. Who know, you might help a reader or two?

Published on July 8, 2008 ·

Comments

2 Responses to “Maybe May wasn’t such a good month for the airlines after all”

On July 9th, 2008 at 7:53 am John F said

And of course, are the complaints actually FILED a good barometer of the actual complaints? I know more clients and people that have essentially given up and said the airlines don’t care, the government doesn’t care..why should I. I fly because I have to and it is what it is!
On July 9th, 2008 at 9:58 am Ron G said

When I started a class on Statistics and Probabilities in high school, my teacher told us all that there are three types of liars…..
1. Liars
2. Damn Liars
3. Statisticians

You can interpret data any way you want to make things look good if needed.

Ron