Which airlines get the most complaints? According to this article, Spirit is way out in front, followed by Frontier, United and American. Southwest and Alaska get the fewest.
Here's a question I have: What percentage of people really have a lot of say in which airline they fly? I don't travel as much as some people but generally, when I go online to book a ticket, there's only one choice that leaves when I want to leave. It doesn't matter that I like Southwest and have had horrid experiences on United. United will turn out to be the only one flying where I want to go when I want to go. And of course, a lot of folks who fly have very little choice over which carrier because they don't book their own tickets.
My friend Joe Brancatelli will probably chime in with the answer. Joe knows everything there is to know about commercial aviation, including what the pilot on your flight is drinking. Here's a recent column of his that told me a lot of stuff that interested me.
Lastly on the subject of air travel, I wanted to recommend an app to anyone who flies. It's called Flightboard and it saved my life (metaphorically) last year…
You know that board in the airport that shows you the current status of every flight? Actually, it's two boards: Arrivals and Departures. Well, a lot of apps will give you that info but Flightboard lays it out in the neatest, most useful manner. You can set it for any airport and you can set it to show you Arrivals or Departures, depending on which concerns you at that moment.
Here's my story. When I flew out of Indianapolis last May, I checked in at ticket counter and they told me my 3:41 PM flight would be delayed until at least 6 PM. That would cause me to miss a connecting flight and mess up a carefully-planned weekend. Being a comic book person, I did a lot of cursing that included punctuation marks, then settled down with my laptop at a table in the food court to kill the extra hours. By the way, the dining choices there brought new meaning to the term, "contempt of court."
Around 3:35. I mused, "Gee, if not for that damned delay, I'd be on the plane now." I decided to see if the departure time had changed any so I hauled out the iPhone, called up Flightboard…and saw that the departure time for my flight was Now Boarding!
I leaped up, packed the laptop in record time, sprinted for the gate and was the last passenger to board the flight before the door closed. If not for Flightboard, I would have been back in the food court, blogging or writing Groo when the plane took off, sans me.
Flightboard for the iPhone sells for $3.99. I'd say it was worth it just for that one usage.