Airline Industry Flat in ACSI’s Annual Report

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is out this morning with its annual report on the travel industry, and it wasn’t good news for the airline industry.

Not when you’re in the same ballpark as the Internal Revenue Service.

Airlines scored a 69 this year on ACSI’s 100-point scale, the same score from last year – no decrease, but no improvement either. That puts the airlines below fellow travel industry categories hotels and internet travel agencies, and at the bottom of the ACSI overall rankings with subscription television service, social media sites and the IRS.

The ACSI is the only independent, national measure of consumer goods and services. The results are based on interviews with 7,445 customers of these three industries, chosen at random and contacted via telephone and email between October 21, 2013 and March 11, 2014.

For the airlines, it was a tale of two halves – pre-flight and in-flight.

“Travelers are happy with airlines before they get on the plane. Even areas that might be considered stereotypical customer pain points, like late departures and arrivals and baggage handling, score high these days,” said David VanAmburg, ACSI managing director. “The one area that continues to plague airlines is the in-flight experience, which can really sour satisfaction with the airline overall.”

Indeed, passengers rated check-in and ease of booking high, both with a score of 82. In-flight? Not so much. Poor service and lack of seat comfort are two reasons why the airlines didn’t improve, as both of those factors came in with scores of 67 and 63, respectively.

Despite a five-percent drop in customer satisfaction compared to last year, JetBlue still remains the highest scoring airline with an ACSI score of 79. Southwest drops four percent but comes in close behind JetBlue at 78. Delta made the highest improvement with a four percent increase to 71. US Airways, up three percent, and American Airlines, up two percent, were both at 66.

According to the ACSI report, United is still struggling with passenger service following its 2010 merger with Continental. It has the lowest ACSI score (60) in the industry following a three percent decline.

“We’ve seen time and time again the negative impact mergers have on customer satisfaction. American Airlines may also see a slump in satisfaction as it combines operations with US Airways,” said Claes Fornell, ACSI Founder. “Southwest led the industry for 17 years until it merged with Airtran in 2011 and Delta is just now recovering from its 2008 merger with Northwest.”

Overall, since ACSI first established baseline scores in the summer of 1994 for the six major airlines (JetBlue, Southwest, Delta, American, US Airways and United), as well as an "all others" category, every single airline has either been flat or has fallen in customer satisfaction.

United took the biggest drop at 15.5 percent.