Why Did Federal Flight Complaint Data Suddenly Disappear?

In May 2023, the Department of Transportation reported 4,425 complaints about experiences with airlines in its monthly Air Travel Consumer Report. This is a 200% jump from the year prior, when the agency received 2,411 complaints.

We can’t report on how many complaints have been filed each month—or with which airlines—since then because the department hasn’t published any data since the summer of 2023.

Generally, DOT recommends that when travelers have a complaint about a flight experience—a refund or baggage issue, a disability-related incident, an animal-related event, or discrimination, among many other things—they file it directly with the airline. If they’re not satisfied with the airline’s response, then they can file with DOT directly. While the number of complaints doesn’t seem high compared to the number of people in the US who fly each month—2.9 million people fly each day—the effort it takes to file a formal complaint with DOT after already filing with the airline regarding an experience likely affects those numbers.

Michele Erwin, founder and president of All Wheels Up, an advocacy group working to increase accessibility and improve air transit for passengers with disabilities, says that the decision to file a complaint typically comes from a really bad experience. “For someone to go ahead and make a formal complaint, that means that person was negatively impacted and they want their voice heard if they’re going to make that extra step,” Erwin says. “We hear it at All Wheels Up all the time. They just want to move on. They want to get on with their trip, get on with their life.”

This data is basically Yelp for passengers with disabilities, she says. That is, this information is combined with social media to help people make decisions about which airlines to book with, and which ones to avoid.

“They have to go somewhere to find out who they want to fly with,” Erwin says. “However, it really shouldn’t be up to social media to inform the consumer on the bad practices of an airline.”

An increase in the number of complaints might seem bad; more complaints can mean more mistreated passengers. But that’s not entirely true. More complaints could also be a sign that DOT’s nonstop campaigns to increase passenger rights and public awareness are actually working. In the past two years, there’s been a deluge of rules and regulations set forth by the agency to better regulate the airline industry.

But, whatever the reason complaints increased between 2022 and 2023, we don’t know if that’s remained true for any months after May 2023 because that consumer complaint data has not been made available to the public.

“Given the continued high volume of air travel service complaints, the Department decided to change how it processes consumer complaints prior to the launch of its modernized consumer complaint database system,” a spokesperson from DOT told Thrillist. “Rather than continuing to code consumer complaints received, which leaves little time to analyze these complaints, staff in the Department’s Office of Aviation Consumer Protection have prioritized analyzing complaints for enforcement cases.”

The enforcement in question has been historic: Southwest was charged $140 million in fines for its 2022 holiday meltdown, resulting in money back for passengers.

But even with notable wins like this, the lack of monthly consumer complaint data leaves an information gap. The data not only shared the number of complaints regarding each category, but which airline received the lion share of the complaints for a specific issue. For instance, in May 2023, American Airlines received the most disability-related complaints (38 of 221), which was also the case the month prior. (You can, however, see how many wheelchair and scooters were mishandled by airline; In January 2024, Spirit Airlines mishandled 3.5 per every 100 enplaned.)

But fortunately, the data isn’t gone for good. DOT has plans to share the data from June 2023 until December 31, 2023 by June 2024. The department also plans to launch a new system that will allow the DOT to more effectively address consumer complaints.

“​​DOT is developing a new modernized consumer complaint database system to receive complaints from consumers who experience air travel service problems,” DOT told Thrillist in a statement. “The prior system required manual coding of every complaint that DOT received against airlines and ticket agents, which took considerable staff time. The Department anticipates that this new modernized system will be operational in summer 2024 and will be further enhanced in the coming years.”

In the meantime, if you’ve got a complaint about a recent flight, don’t hesitate to file your own complaint. You can file with DOT online here. And if you’d like to see how every airline compares when it comes to mishandled baggage, flight delays, and more, now you know where to look.