Consumers flying an unfriendly sky
TEXT OF STORY
Scott Jagow: Every year, a survey comes out on airline customer satisfaction. For the most part, once again this year, there isn’t any. Alisa Roth reports.
Alisa Roth: They’ve gotten rid of peanuts, pillows and legroom. So no surprise, then, that airlines are more disappointing than ever.
The one exception is Southwest, which has:
Claes Fornel: Very high levels of passenger satisfaction. I mean, it’s almost like it belongs to a different industry.
Claes Fornel is a business professor at the University of Michigan, and founder of the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
Apparently it wouldn’t take much to make fliers happier. Fornel says he expects other airlines to get rid of their hub and spoke models. Which would make it easier for them to:
Fornel: Take you from destination A to B, usually with your luggage and usually on time.
Don’t expect things to improve anytime soon. Many of the airlines in the survey are in merger talks. And Fornel says limited competition means little incentive to improve customer service.
In New York, I’m Alisa Roth for Marketplace.
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