Airline passengers' complaints on upswing

— -- Mike Tancredi hasn't recovered the Garmin GPS device that he says disappeared from a checked bag on a Spirit Airlines flight in November.

Spirit said no compensation was justified under its rules, and Tancredi didn't hear from the airline when he later complained to the Department of Transportation.

Like millions of fliers who griped about airline service last year, Tancredi now knows two things about making complaints: Satisfaction isn't guaranteed. Responses aren't, either.

In a year that ended with airline travel taking its sharpest dip since the Sept. 11 attacks, the DOT was still deluged with passenger complaints — more than 9,200 through Oct. 31. That's enough to make 2008 the second-worst year in the past seven for consumer complaints to the industry's federal regulator, USA TODAY discovered when it tallied up the numbers released monthly on the DOT's website. Full-year 2008 figures will be released next month.

Concerns about airline customer service recently prompted the DOT to propose new rules requiring airlines to acknowledge all complaints within 30 days and to give a substantive response within 60 days. After a public comment period, the rule could go into effect this year.

Airlines don't report how many complaints they receive, but the DOT estimates a U.S. airline directly receives 50 complaints for every one the government gets.

Even at that ratio, it's still a small percentage of the tens of millions of passengers that a large airline flies in a year. But DOT complaint data are a barometer of which airlines are raising customers' ire, and whose service is improving or declining over time.

A close look at that data, and interviews with DOT and industry officials, finds:

•More than 60,000 passengers have sent complaints to the DOT about U.S. and foreign airlines since 2001. The totals range from 100 to 1,800 a year for every major U.S. airline.

•US Airways, which led the industry in 2007 with 1,828 complaints, appears to have improved its performance in 2008. Its total through October was 957.

Does complaining make a difference? Sometimes, but many customers, such as Tancredi, say they get nowhere. "I've never seen anything like this," says Tancredi, of Adrian, Mich., who had flown on Spirit several times a year without a problem until his GPS vanished. "I'm very upset about the way they handled this whole thing."