JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Many of you are probably planning trips for summer - and the most common method for long vacations is flying. But a new report is shedding a negative light of the flying experience.
From late flights, more bags getting lost, and even workers STEALING from luggage, new data from the government can be disturbing. Reports show customers are logging more complaints about U.S. airlines. And that's not what's most alarming.
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A recent video taken from the Miami International Airport reveals airport baggage handlers, caught red-handed, rifling through luggage.
Undercover cameras and the police are catching the baggage handlers not only in Miami -- but around the nation -- stealing on planes, and in supposedly secure areas of the airport. Surveillance video even caught a security guard apparently in on the thefts.
"A lot of times there is no other response other than shock that they were caught. That's OK with us. As many of them that we can take off the airfield, the better it is for everybody that travels through Miami International Airport." said Lt. Peter Estis from the Miami-Dade Police Department.
It's certainly not a problem that is just happening in Miami. CNN reports over the past five years, there have been nearly 31,000 passenger claims of items missing from luggage filed with the TSA. About 25,000 of those claims alleged valuables missing from checked bags. The rest of those claimed say they disappeared from a TSA checkpoint.
513 TSA officers have been fired for theft since 2002. It adds up to $2.5 million dollars worth of passenger belongings, gone.
Thefts aren't the only problem contributing to the flying experience getting worse.
Flight delays are also a factor. The percentage of flights that arrived on time fell to 76.2% last year from 78.4% in 2013.
Hawaiian Airlines ranked the best for flight arrival times. The worst flights came from Envoy Air, which operate most American Eagle flights.
Overbooking is another problem. The rate of passengers getting bumped from flights rose 3%. The best airline: Virgin America. The worst when it comes to overbooking is a tie, between SkyWest and its ExpressJet subsidiary.
Consumer complaints to the government jumped 22% in 2014.
Airlines are ordering new planes and making other investments that they promise will lead to better service. Many of the biggest improvements are targeted at the airlines' most valued customers - those in first-class and business-class sections.