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%.
Between the fake security theater treating everyone like absolute shit, the miniature airline seating designed to break knee caps, the over-crowded disease-spreading cabins, and the constant threat that the airline will kick you off the flight because they intentionally overbooked, airline travel is complete bullshit.
This is the result of airlines allowed to self regulated… and the TSA
Ahh the invisible hand of the market
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It is dehumanizing. On the other hand, road trips are liberating.
I would love to see a reputable researcher try to calculate total lost revenues from travel avoidance.
Does anything substantial actually come from the complaints? Are we expected to see some sort of retribution against these airlines or reduced federal subsidies to them? I’m genuinely asking because there really isn’t any alternative for fast travel.
I prefer traveling by rail so much, it’s just far superior for so many trips. If only countries other than like a handful would invest in some truly good HSR, we could be living in the future. Instead we have the absolute garbage experience of flying. Yuck.
Let’s go back to water travel
Alternate title; Judging from the level of air-line complaints, people are getting bitchier.
Pete Buttigieg is part of the problem. He had his pick of posts, but he picked Secretary of Transportation, specifically so he could spread infrastructure money and attend ribbon-cuttings for four years, and avoid any serious matters that might blow back on him. Worse, he refuses to actually run the department like a serious leader, because he wants to keep big-business happy, so Wall Street donors fund his next presidential campaign.
A proper Secretary of Transportation would be all over the airlines and rail companies in this moment.
EDIT: I get the vibe that this is a hard truth, but you might spend a few minutes actually reading up on his tenure, the rail debacles, including the crushed strike, and the repeated lack of oversight on the airlines since 2021 as they have repeatedly gouged customers and cancelled thousands of flights. Buttigieg is studiously avoiding mixing it up on behalf of traveling Americans.
Yeah, Buttigieg is a total shill and always has been.
It’s interesting that even Lemmy seems to simp him. I didn’t say anything about him above that isn’t either an objective fact or reasonably deducible from the objective facts.
His father was a Gramsci expert, but somehow produced neolib Alfred E. Neumann, whose signature moves are verbal blackface, referencing a short paperwork trip as if he was at the Bulge, reducing gayness to a political prop, and assiduously avoiding doing anything to help regular Americans.
Dunno if you’ve seen the mini-documentary that came out about him several years ago but damn. Dude is an actual unfeeling sociopath. I feel so bad for his prop/husband.
It was probably the creepiest thing I saw that year. The dude is a monster.
Ok top five worst things he did. You got a microphone and I won’t argue with what you say.
He did work for McKinsey consulting which in itself is always a red flag.
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Neolibs. Buttigieg isn’t a leftist. He’s center-right.
Yeah let’s compare it to a list of things that Republicans have touched that have objectively improved:
- ?
You’re right, that’s way better :)
