Airline Reliability & Complaint Benchmark

Compare airlines across the United States, Brazil, and Australia using the latest official reliability and consumer-reporting data. The Actor preserves each market's definitions, then converts local standing into a normalized cross-market score for international shortlists.

Why use this Actor?

• Compare selected airlines from different countries in one run.
• Keep local market scores and ranks alongside normalized international standing.
• Detect deteriorating punctuality or cancellation performance early.
• Compare shortlisted carriers for procurement, partnerships, travel policy, or market analysis.
• Monitor official reports automatically while avoiding duplicate monthly snapshots.
• Keep country-specific definitions visible instead of treating unlike metrics as interchangeable.

Market coverage

Market	Operational reporting	Complaint reporting	Punctuality threshold
United States	Monthly marketing-carrier reliability and cancellations	Monthly DOT complaint cases and mishandled baggage	15 minutes
Brazil	Monthly operations touching Brazil, aggregated by airline	Latest annual ANAC consumer complaint cases where the airline can be matched	30 minutes
Australia	Monthly domestic and regional airline reliability	Not available in the current benchmark	15 minutes

benchmarkScore and marketRank are calculated within each market. In an All markets run, crossMarketScore converts local rank into a 0–100 percentile: 100 means market leader. This supports directional international comparison without treating different regulatory definitions as identical.

Who is it for?

• Travel and procurement teams: shortlist carriers for policies and partnerships.
• Aviation analysts: track peer rankings and monthly changes.
• Travel platforms: enrich carrier comparison dashboards with official signals.

Input

Choose All markets and select airlines from any country. Leave airlines empty to return the complete international cohort. A single-market option remains available for country-specific analysis.

{
  "market": "all",
  "airlines": ["delta", "TAM", "qantas"],
  "runId": "carrier-review-2026-08"
}

Input fields

Field	Required	Description
market	No	all, united_states, brazil, or australia. Defaults to all.
airlines	No	Airline keys from the dropdown. Empty means the complete comparable cohort.
reportUrl	No	Official report URL for a single-market historical backfill. Not available with all.
datasetId	No	Existing Apify dataset to which the same rows should also be appended.
runId	No	Pipeline identifier copied into every output row.

Output

Each item represents one airline. Cross-market runs add global fields while retaining local evidence and definitions.

Example Australian row:

{
  "crossMarketRank": 1,
  "crossMarketScore": 85.7,
  "marketRank": 2,
  "marketCohortSize": 8,
  "rank": 2,
  "airlineKey": "qantas",
  "airline": "Qantas",
  "market": "Australia",
  "countryCode": "AU",
  "reportDataMonth": "July 2026",
  "coverageTier": "OPERATIONS_ONLY",
  "punctualityThresholdMinutes": 15,
  "benchmarkScore": 65.3,
  "riskTier": "STABLE",
  "onTimeArrivalPercent": 82.1,
  "cancellationPercent": 1.6,
  "scheduledOperations": 7138,
  "cancelledOperations": 111,
  "complaintCases": null,
  "complaintPeriod": null,
  "scoredMetrics": ["on-time performance", "cancellations"],
  "changeStatus": "NEW",
  "weakestSignal": "cancellations",
  "recommendedAction": "Investigate schedule resilience, staffing, and recovery capacity."
}

Important output fields

• crossMarketScore: percentile of the airline's rank in its own market; 100 is market leader.
• crossMarketRank: order among returned airlines; equal normalized scores share a rank.
• benchmarkScore: composite peer score calculated only within the airline's market.
• marketRank and marketCohortSize: local standing and full peer-cohort size. rank remains an alias of marketRank for API compatibility.
• riskTier: LEADER, STABLE, WATCH, or CRITICAL.
• scoredMetrics: metrics that actually contributed to this airline's score.
• coverageTier: FULL_REGULATORY, OPERATIONS_WITH_ANNUAL_COMPLAINTS, or OPERATIONS_ONLY.
• punctualityThresholdMinutes: delay threshold used by the regulator for that market.
• scoreChange and rankChange: movement versus the previously saved report month.
• changeStatus: NEW, IMPROVED, DECLINED, or STABLE.
• complaintPeriod: period represented by complaint cases; it can differ from the operational month.
• OUTPUT: cross-market leaders, market summaries, freshness state, and methodology.
• RUN_SUMMARY: operational status suitable for monitoring and webhooks.

Scoring methodology

Within each market, the Actor converts available metrics into peer percentiles and applies these target weights:

• on-time performance: 45%;
• cancellation rate: 25%;
• complaint proxy rate: 20%, when a comparable rate is available;
• mishandled baggage rate: 10%, when available.

Weights are redistributed across available metrics. Brazilian annual complaints remain informational because they cover a different period.

Higher punctuality is better. Lower cancellations, complaint rates, and baggage rates are better. For international runs, crossMarketScore = 100 × (cohort size − market rank) ÷ (cohort size − 1). Use it for relative standing, then inspect raw metrics, thresholds, and coverage before making a decision.

Run with the Apify API

Replace YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN with your token:

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/trovevault~airline-reliability-complaint-benchmark/runs?waitForFinish=300" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"market":"all","airlines":["delta","TAM","qantas"]}'

Fetch dataset rows using the defaultDatasetId returned by the run:

curl \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/DATASET_ID/items?clean=true&format=json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"

Monthly automation

Weekly polling tolerates publication delays. The Actor stores a separate snapshot per market and sets OUTPUT.hasNewReport to true only when that market's data month changes.

For resilient monitoring, schedule three independent actions:

{"market":"united_states"}
{"market":"brazil"}
{"market":"australia"}

Use a successful-run webhook and continue downstream only when OUTPUT.hasNewReport is true.

Data interpretation

United States

The U.S. cohort uses the monthly Department of Transportation Air Travel Consumer Report. Complaint cases and baggage measures are available for reporting marketing carriers. complaintsPer100kScheduledOperations is a transparent comparison proxy, not a passenger-normalized complaint rate.

Brazil

The Brazilian cohort aggregates ANAC flights whose origin or destination is in Brazil. Airlines need at least 100 monthly operations. Punctuality means not delayed by more than 30 minutes.

The latest annual consumer complaint file is matched to airline entities where possible. Raw annual complaint counts are not included in the operational score and may be absent for some foreign carriers.

Australia

Australia uses BITRE's monthly table for major domestic and regional airlines. Complaint and baggage fields remain null because comparable airline-level measures are unavailable.

Limitations

• Regulatory reports lag the real-world travel month.
• Networks, subsidiaries, and codeshares are consolidated differently by market.
• Peer scores can move when the reporting cohort changes even if an airline's raw metric is stable.
• Brazilian complaint data is annual while operational data is monthly.
• Australian coverage is limited to participating domestic and regional carriers.
• Extreme weather, industrial action, airport constraints, and other extraordinary events can materially affect a month.
• This benchmark is not a safety rating and should not be the sole basis for legal, regulatory, or passenger-rights decisions.

Troubleshooting

No airlines matched the selection

Confirm that the airline belongs to the selected scope. Choose All markets to mix country codes in one run.

A complaint field is null

That market may not publish a comparable complaint metric, or the airline could not be matched safely to the annual complaint file. Check coverageTier and scoredMetrics.

The report month looks old

Official regulatory releases lag the underlying operations. reportDataMonth describes the measured month, not the collection date.

A historical URL was rejected

reportUrl accepts only the official domain corresponding to the selected market.

Integrations

Export as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS. Use datasetId to append rows and runId to join workflow metadata. The output works with webhooks, dashboards, scheduled tasks, and MCP workflows that call Apify Actors.

Changelog

• August 2026 — Added All markets comparisons with normalized international scores and ranks.
• August 2026 — Added Brazil and Australia, market-aware snapshots, and three-market scheduling.
• Initial release — United States DOT reliability and complaint benchmark.

Support

If an official layout change causes missing rows, open an Actor issue with the run ID, market, and report month. The Actor fails instead of silently returning an incomplete cohort.