Airline Disability Complaints 2006

US government stats - airline disability complaints for 2006

© Jill Browne

Mar 11, 2007

Details of the "Disability" category of complaints against airlines in the US for the year 2006. Government statistics and additional non-government calculations.

The 2006 annual statistics on consumer complaints against airlines operating in the US are contained in the Febuary 2007 Air Travel Consumer Report from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Complaints are divided into categories. The definition of the "Disability" category is, "Civil rights complaints by air travellers with disabilities." This type of complaint is specifically excluded from the "Discrimination" category.

From page 42, Table 2 (YTD): Disability complaints as a category ranked #6 (last year, #6) in the list of complaint categories for the year. The number of complaints in the Disability category was 427 for the year compared to 511 for the preceding year. This is a 16.4 percent decrease in the number of disability complaints from 2005 to 2006.

From page 43, Table 3 (YTD): Of the 427 Disability complaints for the year, 365 (85.5%) were against U.S. airlines compared to 430 (84.2%) against U.S. airlines in the previous year. In alphabetical order, the U.S. airlines against which complaints were recorded, and the number of complaints for the year were:

These numbers can be misleading.

First, the raw numbers mean nothing unless you consider how many people flew on each airline during the year. And, this analysis is specifically about Disability complaints, not about service in general. Over-booking and other sources of consumer complaints affect disabled travellers but those complaints are not taken into account here.

Disability Complaints per 1 Million Enplanements (A passenger getting onto an airplane is an enplanement)

Taking into account the number of enplanements, the numbers start to look very different. For some of the airlines, the report does not disclose the number of enplanements as it is less than the smallest reported number. For the sake of analysis, I used the smallest number of enplanements when calculating the statistic for the smaller airline. This gives those small airlines a slight advantage, but it is not likely to be important in the present context.

US Airlines with Fewer than 1 Disability Complaint per 2 Million Enplanments

These calculations are not part of the government report. They were performed using data from the government report. The calculations are not exact, as the number of enplanements was estimated for the smaller airlines. However, using that estimate, the number of disability complaints per million enplanements is less than 0.5 for these airlines, ranked from the lowest number of complaints per million to the highest. The estimation may have the effect of giving a small airline a better rank than it might actually deserve.

US Airlines with Fewer than 1 Disability Complaint per 1 Million Enplanments

These calculations are not part of the government report. Again, for the smaller airlines, the number of enplanements was estimated. The estimation may have the effect of giving a small airline a better rank than it might actually deserve.

US Airlines with More than 1 Disability Complaint per 1 Million Enplanments

These calculations are not part of the government report.

The greatest number of disability complaints per 1 million enplanements was for Pinnacle Airlines, with 6 total complaints per 2,686,167 enplanements, for a rate of 2.23 disability complaints per million enplanements. This is the only US airline with more than 2 disability complaints per million enplanements in 2006.

Non-US Airlines

From page 44, Table 4 (YTD): Of the 427 Disability complaints for the year, 61 were against companies other than U.S. airlines, and one was classed as "Miscellaneous".

In alphabetical order, the non-U.S. airlines against which complaints were recorded, and the number of complaints for the year were:

The report does not say how many enplanements were logged by each of the foreign airlines.

The report does not give the details of the individual complaints, nor how they were dealt with.

The monthly statistical reports about disability complaints are summarized in Accessible Travel articles on an ongoing basis. Here are the links to some of those summaries.

January 2007 (report dated March 2007)

December 2006 (report dated February 2007)

November 2006 (report dated January 2007)

October 2006 (report dated December 2006)


The copyright of the article Airline Disability Complaints 2006 in Accessible Transportation is owned by Jill Browne. Permission to republish Airline Disability Complaints 2006 must be granted by the author in writing.




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