Air travel is getting worse, judging from the number of consumer complaints.
Consumer complaints about airlines nearly doubled in the first three months of this year compared with the same period last year and kept soaring in April and May, the U.S. Transportation Department said Wednesday.
Those are the latest figures from the government. The Transportation Department said information about complaints has been delayed because there are so many of them to process.
The department said it received 24,965 complaints about airline service in the first three months of the year, up 88% from the first quarter of 2022. Consumers filed another 6,712 complaints in April, up 32% from a year earlier, and 6,465 in May, an increase of 49%.
The cost difference between business and economy for domestic flights is insane recently. Last week I got an upsell ad in checkin to upgrade the first segment of my flight for 700 dollars. This was a 40 minute flight on a regional jet. The difference in seats on that flight is minimal - 2 extra inches of legroom, and such a short flight no service. But the reason that the difference is so high is because of supply and demand - people do want things to not be shitty but there aren’t enough not shit to go around.