Air Travel Is Awful. Transparency Can Improve It.
If passengers steer more business to the carriers with the best service, that will motivate underperforming rivals to fix their problems. Sorting them is the first step.
Don’t get mad, get informed.
Photographer: Alex Kraus/Bloomberg
When airline passengers watch in horror as their flight status blinks from “delayed” to “canceled,” two competing visions are likely to pop into their heads. One is pitchforks and torches. The other is a couple of hundred other travelers scrambling to get on the next available flight. Linger too long on pitchfork and torches, though, and a third vision comes into play: having to find a hotel room.
Air travel is full of nightmare scenarios. The percentage of cancellations is at the highest in at least 15 years excluding the pandemic-ravaged 2020. Complaints to the Transportation Department about US airlines spiked to 16,000 in the first half of this year from 6,000 in the same period three years ago, even though there were more flights in 2019. Passengers are left to wonder where the $50 billion in Covid payroll aid for the industry went.