Frustrated by delays, cancellations, and hassles at airports including lost luggage and long security lines, Americans have turned massively away from air travel, a poll showed on Thursday.

"The survey results shows that air travelers avoided 41 million trips in the last 12 months... because of the hassle of flying," Roger Dow, president of the Travel Industry Association (TIA), which commissioned the poll, told a news conference.

"That's 100 000 trips a day and the cost impact to the US economy is a whopping $26.5-billion," he said.

The chief reasons given for avoiding air travel by the 1003 adults surveyed by telephone earlier this month were "inefficient security screening and flight cancellations and delays," said Allan Rivlin, a partner at Peter D. Hart Research Associates, which conducted the survey with the Winston Group.

Flight delays, cancellations

A majority of poll respondents — 53 percent of the 1003 adults surveyed by telephone earlier this month — singled out flight delays and cancellations as the main area of air travel that could use some improvements.

Thirty-six percent said getting through security was the biggest hassle, 26 percent cited "retrieving checked luggage", while just 15 percent of respondents said there was room for improvement in the inflight experience.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans said they thought the air travel system in the United States was already bad and getting worse, and one-quarter of the poll respondents said it was "broken".

"There's a lot of frustration among travelers in general and in particular among frequent flyers. The frustration grows the more trips you take," Rivlin told reporters.

"The parts of the system that are the most frustrating are not the ones that are directly under the airlines' control," he said.

The millions of trips not taken cost airlines $9-billion in revenues and impacted on other areas of the travel and tourism industry.

Hotels could have reaped an additional $6-billion and restaurants more than $3-billion if more Americans had decided to travel during the past 12 months, TIA said.

Economic situation

Recent spikes in fuel prices, which have been passed on in various ways to the consumer by airlines — American Airlines this month announced it will charge $15 per checked bag — could drive even more Americans away from air travel.

"If there's a dynamic here where people are frustrated... (higher costs) will only enhance the reasons for them not to travel," Dow said.

The TIA, a non-profit organisation that represents the $740-billion US travel industry, called on Congress and contenders for the White House to address the issue of deteriorating air travel conditions in the United States.

"We need Washington to make this an absolute priority. This has a huge economic impact. It's the way we do life and business. We need action to improve the situation," Dow said.

According to the TIA, travel and tourism is one of the top industries in the United States and employs one out of every eight Americans.

"We have to get on the radar screen what the implications of this are," said Dow.

"Not just the implications for hotels and airlines but for the person who doesn't go to a convention or the person who doesn't go to get the deal for their small company. We have to look at the impact this has way beyond the travel industry," he said.

The TIA has called an emergency summit of travel leaders on 17 June to discuss how to push the air travel crisis higher up onto policymakers' agendas.

The poll was the first of its kind, a spokesperson for TIA told AFP.