November Complaints Show Specific Airline Weaknesses

(MoneyWatch)  It's very interesting to dig in to the DOT's monthly Air Travel Consumer Report because you can really find some interesting nuggets of information. For example, January's report (for November travel) shows some trends on customer complaints. You can clearly see who is doing what wrong.

I fully understand that smaller airlines can have fewer complaints but still have a higher percentage, but I was just looking for numbers that stood out. Here's what I found.

Most airlines that had problems had them in two areas: "flight problems" and "res/tktg/boarding." US Airways, Delta, and American seemed to really fill up in those areas. But a couple other airlines had problems in other areas. Spirit, for example, had a high number of complaints about refunds (13). That means that people either weren't getting their money in time or Spirit wasn't going to give them their money at all.

Delta meanwhile seemed to have some baggage problems, something that isn't surprising since Delta was third from last in the lost bag rankings this month. (One of its regional operators, Atlantic Southeast, was dead last as has often been the case.) American, meanwhile, appears to have had a little trouble with customer service in November.

Overall, these numbers are small. The worst airline, US Airways, had a total of 73 complaints filed during the month, down from 103 the same month last year, and way down from summer peak numbers. But it still can give us some insight into which airlines are having problems in which areas.