We owe the nation’s top 10 airlines, and our readers, an apology. Two Sundays ago, we published figures from the Department of Transportation’s Air Travel Consumer Report for August. We listed each airline, the number of complaints filed with the DOT and the number of passengers (enplanements) it flew. The problem came when we expressed the number of complaints as a percentage of enplanements: What we gave as percentages were the number of complaints per 100,000 enplanements. The effect made the airlines appear to have received a greater percentage of complaints than they actually did. We thank the readers and airline representatives who brought these errors to our attention, and we regret the errors. So let’s try this again. Here are the August figures:
Alaska Airlines: 24 complaints; 1,381,968 enplanements; 1.74 complaints per 100,000 enplanements
America West: 80 complaints; 1,693,224 enplanements; 4.72 complaints per 100,000 enplanements
American: 337 complaints; 7,383,999 enplanements; 4.56 complaints per 100,000 enplanements
Continental: 150 complaints; 3,994,349 enplanements; 3.76 complaints per 100,000 enplanements
Delta: 245 complaints; 9,346,134 enplanements; 2.62 complaints per 100,000 enplanements
Northwest: 153 complaints; 5,364,963 enplanements; 2.85 complaints per 100,000 enplanements
Southwest: 35 complaints; 5,892,342 enplanements; 0.59 complaints per 100,000 enplanements
TWA: 112 complaints; 2,417,042 enplanements; 4.63 complaints per 100,000 enplanements
United: 288 complaints; 8,278,123 enplanements; 3.48 complaints per 100,000 enplanements
US Airways: 210 complaints; 4,893,731 enplanements; 4.29 complaints per 100,000 enplanements
