"Study says satisfaction still lagging for U.S. airlines"

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Study says satisfaction still lagging for airlines
But Southwest and Continental improve in customer survey
By HARRY R. WEBER
The Associated Press 

 
ATLANTA - Bankruptcy can be a wake-up call for airlines about the need to
run their operations more efficiently, but it also can shine a light on more
basic challenges like making customers happy.

United Airlines and Delta Air Lines, both of which restructured under
Chapter 11 in recent years, ranked last and next-to-last, respectively,
among airlines in terms of customer satisfaction in a survey to be released
today by the University of Michigan.

Marks were only slightly better for American Airlines, which teetered on the
verge of bankruptcy before winning employee concessions in 2003, and
Northwest Airlines Corp., which is in bankruptcy.

There were some bright spots for a few airlines in the survey. Dallas-based
Southwest Airlines Co. ranked first, and was one of only two airlines
mentioned by name in the survey that improved in terms of customer
satisfaction this year compared with last year. Houston-based Continental
Airlines was the other.

"The first step in improvement here is to recognize that something is
wrong," said Claes Fornell, a University of Michigan business professor and
director of the research center that compiled the data. The airlines said
they are working hard to improve the experience of their customers.

"We know the service is not where it should be as far as baggage delivery,"
said Betsy Talton, a spokeswoman for Atlanta-based Delta. "We're
concentrating on that this year."

Tim Wagner, a spokesman for Fort Worth-based AMR, said there isn't much the
airlines can do when weather delays flights.

"The one thing we can do is focus on the things we can control, and that's
our face-to-face interaction with customers," Wagner said.

About 20,000 people were asked during the first quarter of this year to rate
their level of satisfaction as customers of companies in a variety of
industries, including the airlines. An American Customer Satisfaction Index,
on a scale of 1 to 100, was created based on the responses to questions.

The index for the airline industry as a whole fell to 63 from 65 last year.

"The same problems that have pulled airline passenger satisfaction down the
past few years - disenchanted employees, increasing fuel costs, bankruptcy,
and now also record levels of lost, delayed, and damaged luggage - cause it
to drop again," the researchers said in their analysis.

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