New Airline Passenger Survey Claims Rise in Satisfaction Levels

According to a survey for the airline industry that just recently came out, passenger satisfaction with airlines is up when compared to last year. Despite this, it seems that some experts say that these “gains” may actually start to slip away soon.

Right now customer satisfaction is up 3.1 percent on last year’s numbers, according to the American Customer Satisfaction index survey. It was the United States airline industry’s highest score on the index scale in almost five years.

Claes Fornell, the head of the index and a professor at the University of Michigan, said that airline passenger satisfaction has gone up, and the airlines are doing a better job at creating customer service. A good deal of this is actually due to the fact that there have been fewer passengers recently. This has led to price drops and better on-time ratings. Travelers overall have become much more competent in shopping for deals online.

However, recently fares for airlines have been on the rise again. Flights are getting fuller due to the fact that the global recession has now eased off. Fornell says that delays and frustrations are likely to start growing as airlines see an increase in passengers. He continued that airlines face a challenge over the summer to sustain this improvement that has already been seen in passenger satisfaction levels. Unfortunately, Fornell does believe that this was just a short-lived phenomenon.

The rise in passenger satisfaction does mirror the findings that were released last week by J.D. Power and Associates. They found that travelers have been happier this year than last year with the performance of North American airlines.