Lots and lots of empty seats and crew members wearing masks and gloves and with lots of available ... [+]
U.S. airlines dramatically improved their customer satisfaction scores over the 12 months ended March 31, according to J.D. Power’s annual study of North America carriers’ customer satisfaction.
The report, released Wednesday, showed that the group’s average score rose an unprecedented 27 points in one year.
Of course, with 60% fewer passengers to care for amid the coronavirus pandemic, one would expect that airlines would have more time and a much better staff-to-passenger ratio, making it easier for them to provide more attentive and better service.
Will U.S. airlines be able to hang on to the higher regard which they earned with customers? Sadly, recent actions taken by most carriers are likely to make them seem to be - at least in the eyes of their customers – a lot less understanding and gracious than they were during the 12 months ended March 31.
J.D. Power, which became famous in the 1970s for its customer satisfaction rankings of the big automakers and now performs similar rankings across a wide range of industries, reported that U.S. airlines saw their average score reach an all-time high of 819 on a 1,000-point scale.
Clearly, airline employees – particularly workers like flight attendants, pilots and airport agents who deal directly with air travelers - did a generally better job of that during the last, patience-trying year. But J.D. Power took pains to point out that the biggest factor in the industry’s improved customer satisfaction score was the elimination of nearly all ticketing change fees and travel cancellation penalties during the period when fear of Covid-19 caused the near-collapse of all air travel demand.
Unfortunately – for travel consumers now and perhaps for the airlines’ scores in next year’s J.D. Power study – most carriers recently re-instated their ticketing change fees and penalties. As of May 1, all U.S. carriers except Southwest and Hawaiian airlines once again have begun charging customers to change the dates and/or times of their flights after their initial purchase. Southwest never charged ticketing change fees or penalties and continued to allow customers to use money paid for a booked flight toward the price of a new ticket on an alternate flight. Hawaiian, which did charge ticketing change fees prior to the pandemic, has not yet reinstated such charges amid widespread speculation that it may not ever charge them again.
“The No. 1 factor in customer satisfaction [among airline passengers] going back for more than a decade was the airlines’ attitudes toward the cost of extra services and fees: what’s the price of checking an extra bag or whatever, and what’s the penalty for changing something on my ticket?” said Mike Taylor, J.D. Power’s travel intelligence lead.
“The airlines were wise early on in the pandemic to remove most or all of those fees and extra costs to attract whatever passengers they could get. But that’s a huge source of revenues they were giving up; billions of dollars. And [airline Chief Financial Officers] don’t want to give that up. You can’t take “satisfaction’ to the bank. But you can take those additional dollars to the bank.”
Another factor that figured into the big jump in airline customer satisfaction during the pandemic-battered 2020-2021 study period, Taylor said, was the reduced number of seats sold on most flights during that period. Most carriers limited, at least for several months during those months when Covid-19 cases and deaths were at their highest, the percentage of seats they would sell. And several, including Delta and Alaska, simply blocked all “middle” seats from being sold. That cut capacity by nearly a third, since coach sections, which typically feature three seats to a row, make up the vast majority of narrow body jets’ floor space. It also guaranteed that every passenger would have at least one empty seat (or an aisle) between them and the next passenger.
But effective May 1, Delta, the last carrier still blocking middle seats, stopped doing that, too.
That Delta did give up the practice of blocking middle seats shows that it had been doing so at considerable cost to itself. With passenger demand picking up – its still down nearly 30% from what it was two years ago, but up considerably from being down 95% from 2019 at demand’s nadir in March-April 2020 – Delta no longer can afford to trade the revenue penalty it was taking from blocking middle seats for the cachet of offering more elbow room and less perceived contact with other passengers who might be carrying the Covid-19 virus.
Ending policy of blocking middle seats from sale did not, however, stop the Atlanta-based mega-carrier from crowing loudly in a news release Wednesday that it had, for the first time, come in at No. 1 in the annual J.D. Power rankings. The carrier ranked first in four of the seven service categories examined by J.D. Power through detailed surveys of more than 2,309 actual travelers during the survey period. Delta had the highest scores in passengers’ satisfaction with the service provided by flight crews, with aircraft comfort, cleanliness and safety (which included having the middle seat blocked), inflight service (which includes not only flight attendant service but also inflight entertainment systems and seat comfort), and baggage claim performance.
Delta’s net score in the J.D. Power survey was 860. It was followed by Southwest with a score of 856, Alaska with a score of 850 and JetBlue with a score of 849. United, with a score of 810, and American with a score of 791, were the only large conventional U.S. carriers to score below the industry average of 819. Air Canada, which was included in the J.D. Power rankings, which actually covers all the North American market, scored 759.
U.S. no-frills ultra-low cost carriers, Spirit, Allegiant and Frontier were scored in a separate category.
