Data is provided for all complaints received. Not all of these complaints were taken up by the CAA. Passenger complaints are only taken up by the CAA if the passenger has already put the complaint to the company in question and not been satisfied by its response. In other cases, consumer protection rules may not exist or may not be directly applicable for the complaint in question, or consumers may have misunderstood what they are entitled to, and therefore the CAA will not take up the complaint. Each year a proportion of complaints are passed to the relevant regulators in other EU countries.

The tables headed Complaints and Passengers by Carrier only list individually airlines about which we received 50 or more complaints.

The system used by the CAA to record complaints does not currently allow data to be recorded on the number of complainants that form part of each complaint. For instance, a family of four each seeking financial compensation for a cancelled flight would only be likely to make a single complaint to the CAA. In this case, the CAA’s system would record this as a single complaint, rather than four individual complaints.