Flyers on United Airlines, US Airways and Delta Air Lines are facing new fees and policies for making flight changes: United and US Airways have boosted change fees, while Delta has made various amendments to its rules for same-day flight changes.

In news of U.S. airlines, Delta has started to renovate the cabins in the last of its five widebody aircraft types; American’s CEO makes an appearance on YouTube, but it’s not an advertisement; Virgin America raises a passenger fee; and Hawaiian eyes a new Asian route.

Instead of relying on airline employees to help them with their travel processing and problems, air travelers would really like to see more technological options for taking care of themselves, according to the results of a new survey.

The academics at Purdue and Wichita State who compile the annual Airline Quality Rating (AQR) from a variety of government-collected statistics have come out with their report for the calendar year 2012, and it shows that certain carriers showed considerable improvement — like American  Eagle — while others fared worse than the year before — like United.

The study looks at things like on-time performance, passenger bumpings, mishandled baggage and consumer complaint rates. Overall, the U.S. airline industry’s performance in 2012 declined from the previous year, but “only slightly,” the report said.

The industry’s on-time arrivals rate rose from 80.0 percent in 2011 to 81.8 percent in 2012, while mishandled baggage rates were 3.07 per 1,000 passengers last year, an improvement from 3.35 in 2011. But the number of “involuntary denied boardings” rose from 0.78 per 10,000 passengers in 2011 to 0.97 last year; and passenger complaints filed with the Transportation Department jumped more than 20 percent, to 11,445 in 2012.

“With a mixed bag of gains and losses across the 14 carriers rated, the nearly identical AQR score for the industry (compared to 2011) is a positive sign,” the report said. “The maintenance of the AQR score at a near record low level during difficult economic times speaks well of the industry.”

Among individual companies, the report noted that American Eagle showed the biggest improvement in overall performance last year. The airline cut its denied boarding rate in half and boosted its on-time performance rate by more than five points, to 81.6 percent. Eagle reduced its mishandled baggage rate considerably as well, although it was still above the industry average.

United, on the other hand, showed the biggest decline in performance compared with 2011 (the figures reflect the combined earlier results for United and Continental). According to the report, United’s on-time arrival rate dropped almost three points to 77.4 percent in 2012, while the rate of mishandled baggage rose from 3.66 per 1,000 passengers in 2011 to 3.87 last year. The airline’s passenger bumping rate rose more than 80 percent in 2012, to 1.82 per 10,000 passengers; and the number of customer complaints filed with DOT almost doubled.

Virgin America was included in the 2012 ratings for the first time, and showed a relatively strong performance, with the industry’s lowest rate of mishandled baggage, second-lowest rate of passenger bumpings, and on-time performance (83.5 percent) above the industry average.

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In news of U.S. airlines, American plans to raise fees for membership in its Admirals Club airport lounge program, and also announces new routes out of Los Angeles; Frontier brings airline service to a state that has none; and Delta eyes a new route to London Heathrow.

In news of U.S. airlines, United delays its planned Denver-Tokyo service again; Frontier Airlines keeps shrinking as its parent company ponders what to do with it; and four carriers announce new domestic routes.

The proposed merger of American Airlines and US Airways has moved forward after it won the approval of the bankruptcy judge overseeing AMR Corp.’s Chapter 11 case — but the deal still has a couple of more hurdles to cross.

Courtesy of Bombardier, Inc.

The Learjet 85, to debut this year, is built with composite structures that maximize cabin volume, representing the largest Learjet ever designed. The aircraft is being added to Flexjet’s fractional aircraft program. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A350 are also made of composite materials.

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© Maximilian Hensel / dpa / Corbis

Airline reviewer Skytrax assigns ratings to airlines based on a “quality analysis across more than 800 different areas of product and service delivery.” The reviews are based strictly on onboard/airport service and do not reflect any safety issues. Among airlines with low Skytrax star ratings:

Source: Skytrax

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In news of U.S. airlines, Southwest said it has finished linking up its route network with that of its AirTran Airways subsidiary for reservations purposes; JetBlue will reportedly add premium seating on select flights; AA experiments with a new boarding procedure; and a new study finds that US Airways and merger partner American have something in common — and it’s nothing to brag about.