Airline Industry Gets Low Marks

The latest Airline Quality Rating study showed the worst statistics in the twenty years the study has been conducted for overall quality of airline service. A frequent flyer of course didn’t need anyone to do a survey to tell them that. Flying has become an exasperating experience to airline travelers in this day and age.

This year, the report shows more bags were lost than ever before; more passengers were bumped from their flights and fewer flights arrived on time than the previous year which had been the worst previously recorded.

The overall rating for the industry was the lowest since the study/survey started being conducted almost two decades ago with few airlines getting passing marks.

Now the airline industry states a chief cause for the problems is due to the huge increase in fuel which has forced them to make significant cutbacks in their employee numbers. I could not find a single airline on Yahoo finance that stated they had a cutback in board members this past year but surely there must be a few, or at least one?

Everyone who uses fuel to deliver merchandise or service however have been faced with escalating costs but few seem to have decided that losing a customers products, or in this case luggage, has anything to do with fuel prices. Actually none have except the airline industry.

Now I am not one to hold a great deal of stock in late arrivals or departures overall as inclement weather has no conscience nor concerns for people trying to get somewhere at a certain time. In fact I would rather have an airline tell me the weather is too dangerous to fly in then to just take off in order for everyone on board to get somewhere on time; maybe.

The complaints against baggage lost, poor attitude of airline staff, and bumping people from overbooked flights however are just more proof that airlines feel they have us by the throat and we will just have to suffer their poor business practices or take some other means of slower transportation.

I found it interesting that the three airlines who had the best rating were all low-cost carriers, AirTran, Jet Blue and Southwest. It is obvious in the airline business that bigger doesn’t translate into better but even the smaller airlines are feeling the crunch of rising fuel prices with three; ATA, Aloha Airlines and Skybus stopping service as they try and regroup.

There is no easy solution to this problem. Airports are too busy and there are too many flights that take off far under passenger capacity as the airlines act as shuttle buses for business travelers. The system of continuing flights mean just one severe storm in a hub airport can backlog the entire country. Still airlines have got to do a better job of customer service. There is no excuse for shoddy service and rudeness.

Comment by Danny Davids^(13,494) (51 days 22 hours ago.)