Airline schedules have been cut in half, but customer-service complaints are up nearly 500%

• Airline customer-service complaints to the US Department of Transportation surged in July, the agency said Monday.
• A bulk of those comments involved refunds, which haven’t been easy to get amid the pandemic. 
• The surge in complaints comes even despite the continued slump in flights.
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Getting a refund from an airline isn’t becoming any easier, even half a year into a pandemic that’s upended air travel as we know it.

Data released by the US Department of Transportation on Monday show a nearly 500% increase in customer complaints during July compared to last year, even as just 52% of scheduled air service ran during the same month this year.

Of 11,117 complaints DOT received about airline service in July, it said, 10,257 — or 92% — concerned refunds, a point of contention and frustration since the pandemic first began impacting flights in February.

And while most carriers have adopted more flexible policies in the face of ever-changing research about flying’s safety, getting a flat-out refund is still near impossible in many cases. That’s despite a blunt order from DOT to airlines in April that they “remain obligated to provide a prompt refund” for cancelled flights or those that have a significant schedule change.

Air travel has slowly been increasing in the United States, even as the country’s outbreak is largely uncontrolled. Passenger screening numbers released by the Transportation Security Administration showed that US traffic topped one million on October 19 for the first time since March.

Still, with no end to the pandemic in sight and flights still at a shell of normal schedules, airlines have shed workers and extended furloughs. Further economic relief has been stalled on Capital Hill since the summer, and it’s not clear if further aid for aviation may be included in any eventual compromise.

Even if relief comes, airlines are hunkering down for a long winter of dampened travel.

“Timing [of a recovery] has more to do with the state of the virus and the medical containment of it than it does any specific a strategy that we could deploy to make certain everybody stays safe,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said on a call with investors earlier this month. “Because the goal in this is that we want to eliminate quarantines.”