It seems that the Department of Transportation has had a slow year so far. At the half way mark (January-June), the DOT has received 87 complaints related to frequent flyer programs, as compared to 139 complaints in the same category for the same period in 2001. We punched a few keys in the calculator and found that we frequent flyers have complained 37 percent less this year. And some people think we complain all the time. How do we frequent flyers stack up against all the other complainers? The DOT places each complaint it receives in a specific category then ranks those categories based on the number of complaints received. The more complaints in a category, the higher it ranks. The frequent flyer program complaint category ranks #9, below categories such as disability access, oversales (polite word for bumping) and, of course, air fares. Personally, we were disappointed when the DOT eliminated the complaints about food category.

DID YOU KNOW: Frontier Airlines’ EarlyReturns program is the only frequent flyer program in America that no one has ever complained about — at least through June of this year. That’s right, zero complaints to the DOT.