Airlines are Keeping Flight Delay Data Hidden
Excerpts from Newsweek
A Newsweek review of airlines' websites found data missing or hard to find.
As a busy holiday travel season gets underway, airlines are failing to meet their obligation to clearly post data that could help passengers avoid flights with a history of delays and cancellations, a Newsweek review of the airlines' websites shows.
The Department of Transportation requires large U.S. airlines to show how often particular domestic flights are disrupted when customers search their websites. Newsweek's review found that the information is often hidden behind nondescript links and sometimes does not appear at all. The DOT requires reliability data to be listed on search results pages or via a "prominent hyperlink."
Newsweek found no flight performance data for more than a third of the 100 randomly selected flights it searched for on the websites of the country's 10 largest airlines, which are those to which the DOT regulation applies.
Three airlines — United Airlines, Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines — said after being contacted by Newsweek they were fixing bugs on their websites that may have prevented the data from displaying.
Newsweek found no evidence that the data was being withheld by airlines intentionally to flout the DOT rule and leave customers in the dark. But Paul Hudson, president of the airline passenger advocacy group FlyersRights, said Newsweek's review raised a question as to whether companies are skirting regulations.
"This information is very crucial to passengers' decisions," Hudson said. "It would appear that the industry is gaming the system on this."
Hudson said that airlines need enough people to book all the flights they operate to keep them profitable and there is a risk that if passengers see a flight as unreliable they will steer clear of it.
The airline industry's trade association, Airlines For America, provided a statement in response to Newsweek's findings that said U.S. airlines are committed to providing a positive experience "from first search to touchdown."
"U.S. airlines strive to provide as much information as possible in a transparent, clear and user-friendly way for consumers on their websites," the statement said.
