United Airlines Named Worst Airline Of 2012 With Most Consumer Complaints

And the worst Airline of 2012 is...United Airlines!

Airlines are ranked by consumer complaints, on-time arrivals, mishandled bags, and passengers who bought tickets but were turned away because flights were over booked.

United Airline's complaints doubled last year, mainly because of the chaos that came from merging with Continental Airlines. 

Besides being the overall leader, Virgin America, headquartered in Burlingame, Calif., also did the best job on baggage handling and had the second-lowest rate of passengers denied seats due to overbookings.

But not every airline overbooks flights in an effort to keep seats full. JetBlue and Virgin America were the industry leaders in avoiding denied boardings with rates of 0.01 and 0.07, respectively.

This is the first year Virgin America, created in 2007, has been large enough to be included in the rankings. United carries roughly 18 times more passengers than Virgin America, and has 702 planes, compared to 52 for the smaller carrier.

United Airlines' consumer complaint rate was 4.24 complaints per 100,000 passengers. Southwest had the lowest rate, at 0.25. Southwest was among five airlines that lowered complaint rates last year compared to 2011. The others were American Eagle, Delta, JetBlue and US Airways.

Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance record, 93.4 percent in 2012. ExpressJet and American Airlines had the worst records with only 76.9 percent of their planes arriving on time last year.

Passengers are getting grumpier.  Carriers keep shrinking the size of seats in order to stuff more people into planes. Empty middle seats that might provide a little more room have vanished. And more people who have bought tickets are being turned away because flights are overbooked.

The industry is even looking at ways to make today's smaller-than-a-broom closet toilets more compact in the hope of squeezing a few more seats onto planes.

The one good thing is all airlines have generally improved in bag handling.  But maybe that's because you have to pay for your luggage now so nobody brings as much stuff!