You can assess their performance by checking monthly reports. We're not talking about a fantasy world here. In fact, if you fly from certain airports, usually early in the day, the odds are better than 50-50 that you will have a fairly uneventful trip. The problem with that statistic, of course, is that when you check into a hotel, rent a car, eat in a restaurant, or purchase virtually any other service or product, your odds of a satisfactory experience are far better than 50-50. If you get bad service at a hotel or restaurant, you don't go back, and sooner or later that business may go belly up.
Consumers are simply too demanding for an inferior business to survive.
But if you must fly from an airport dominated by one airline, and especially if thunderstorms are threatened along the route you need to fly, you probably have little or no choice but to be hours late, and endure whatever service the airlines provide. Even in good weather, airlines seem to find ways to make many customers unhappy. Frequent travelers have become accustomed to the agony of delays, as have airline customer-service agents and flight attendants, who usually are the first employees to hear customer complaints. Among the few ways that frustrated passengers can let off steam is to tell the airlines, airport officials, members of Congress, and government regulators that they're unhappy. That helps explain why complaints to the U.S. Department of Transportation about airline service continue to rise, despite Congress' threatening to require the carriers to provide better service.