How the US fell out of love with flying
The apology Southwest Airlines emailed to customers following mass cancellations that stranded travellers across the US over Christmas annoyed Talesha Roberson. The way she saw it, the problems with flying extended far beyond one airline’s high-profile holiday meltdown. Roberson, a Washington state resident who grew up in Indiana, flies back there about five times a year to visit family and friends. In September, maintenance problems delayed her Southwest flight for more than two hours. Then on December 17 — four days before a storm kicked off the chaos at Southwest — the airline cancelled her flight, again because of maintenance. Though Southwest refunded her fare and put her on another flight the next day, when she arrived in Washington her luggage was missing. The mounting inconveniences have made her question the integrity of air travel, not just at Southwest, but across the industry. “People are losing trust,” she says. “A lot more people are going to start going on road trips.” Consumer data backs up Roberson’s feeling: the US flying public is not happy. A Gallup poll in August found that 37% of Americans held a negative view of the airline industry, compared with 27% who held a favourable impression — the first time in more than a decade that critics have outnumbered fans. US air travellers, eager to return to the skies after two years of upheaval due to Covid-19, found themselves being forced to wait for delayed flights or scramble to rearrange plans after cancellations. Of the 9mn scheduled flights in the US last year, nearly a quarter of them were delayed or cancelled. Gripes over flight disruptions, missing baggage and refunds have also surged: consumers filed more than 3,000 complaints against US carriers in October with the US Department of Transportation, nearly five times the number from the same month in 2019.<br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2023-02-03/general/how-the-us-fell-out-of-love-with-flying
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How the US fell out of love with flying
The apology Southwest Airlines emailed to customers following mass cancellations that stranded travellers across the US over Christmas annoyed Talesha Roberson. The way she saw it, the problems with flying extended far beyond one airline’s high-profile holiday meltdown. Roberson, a Washington state resident who grew up in Indiana, flies back there about five times a year to visit family and friends. In September, maintenance problems delayed her Southwest flight for more than two hours. Then on December 17 — four days before a storm kicked off the chaos at Southwest — the airline cancelled her flight, again because of maintenance. Though Southwest refunded her fare and put her on another flight the next day, when she arrived in Washington her luggage was missing. The mounting inconveniences have made her question the integrity of air travel, not just at Southwest, but across the industry. “People are losing trust,” she says. “A lot more people are going to start going on road trips.” Consumer data backs up Roberson’s feeling: the US flying public is not happy. A Gallup poll in August found that 37% of Americans held a negative view of the airline industry, compared with 27% who held a favourable impression — the first time in more than a decade that critics have outnumbered fans. US air travellers, eager to return to the skies after two years of upheaval due to Covid-19, found themselves being forced to wait for delayed flights or scramble to rearrange plans after cancellations. Of the 9mn scheduled flights in the US last year, nearly a quarter of them were delayed or cancelled. Gripes over flight disruptions, missing baggage and refunds have also surged: consumers filed more than 3,000 complaints against US carriers in October with the US Department of Transportation, nearly five times the number from the same month in 2019.<br/>
