Todd Hollander Market Research

Survey results published in the July 2007 issue of Consumer Reports reveal that compared to other industries, the airline industry’s average satisfaction score of 72 on a 100-point scale is better only than such perennials of customer dissatisfaction as wireless carriers, cable TV operators, and computer tech support.

Approximately 23,000 readers rated their experiences on a total of 31,455 U.S. domestic flights in the survey, conducted in February of 2007 by the Consumer Reports National Research Center. The survey questions covered ease of check-in, seating comfort, on-time performance, and in-flight service.

Among the 18 airlines rated, JetBlue, Midwest, and Southwest were rated the highest, while U.S. Airways, America West, and United were rated lowest.

This is good news for JetBlue, which suffered a highly publicized service fiasco earlier this year that resulted in CEO David Neeleman tapping into YouTube to apologize to customers (see “JetBlue CEO uses YouTube to address customer satisfaction nightmare,” Feb. 21, 2007).

The full list:

1. JetBlue

2. Midwest

3. Southwest

4. Frontier

5. Hawaiian

6. Aloha

7. Alaska

8. Spirit

9. Continental

10. AirTran

11. Delta

12. American

13. ATA

14. Northwest

15. American Eagle

16. United

17. America West

18. US Airways

The bottom line: Although the troubled airline industry is back in the black, many customers are still seeing red.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Customer Satisfaction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.