The newly released Airline Quality Rating study (covering the year 2007) shows something that really isn’t much of a surprise to most of us: complaints about the airlines are up — way up. The respected, annual study (sponsored by the Aviation Institute at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and by Wichita State University)shows that airlines failed in the study’s 4-categories: on time performance, baggage handling, denied boarding, and customer service. But again, the most glaring aspect of the report was the rate of complaints; they were up 60% overall. And, that rate more than doubled for US Airways and Comair. In fact complaints were up for all but one of the 16 airlines in the study (the exception was Mesa Airlines). But that doesn’t mean Mesa came out on top in terms of customer satisfaction. Keep reading for for details.

Southwest, the nation’s number one airline in terms of passengers, had the lowest rate of consumer complaints, 0.26 per 100,000 passengers. A bit of good news amidst a lot of bad.

Like the bad news about the on time rate; on-time arrivals dropped for the fifth straight year, with more than one-quarter of all flights late. And, the rates of passengers bumped from overbooked flights and bags that were lost, stolen or damaged also jumped over the past year. Readers may remember another report, from the University of Michigan that came out last year; that ranked the airlines lower than the IRS in terms of consumer satisfaction.

But back to the current study: airlines that were included are: US Airways, comair, Mesa, Frontier, Northwest, Skywest, Southwest, United, American, Delta, AirTran, Alaska, American Eagle, Atlantic Southeast, Continental, and Jet Blue.

An interesting observation from one of the study’s co-authors, Dr. Brent Bowen: “The main problem is the airlines are willing to fly us for less than it actually costs, and no business can be sustainable in those circumstances.”

With so many airlines failing this past week, his words are more prescient than ever.