How Good Is Your Airline?
Two professors analyze the stats.
- By Craig Mellow
- Air & Space magazine, May 2010
Courtesy Jet Blue, Delta and American Airlines: Photo-Illustration By Theo
(Page 2 of 2)
Consumer Reports, J.D. Power and Associates, and other rivals rely on “a more perceptual base” that lets subjectivity creep in, Headley says.
Does the Rating have a dollars-and-cents impact on the airlines? That’s hard to gauge. “Business travelers bring in maybe 80 percent of the revenue, and their companies have block agreements with one airline or another,” says Helane Becker, an analyst who follows the industry at Jesup & Lamont, an investment house in New York. “Leisure travelers just look for cost and convenience.” A top finish is a source of pride nonetheless. When AirTran took first place in 2007, the company suspended operations for 15 minutes at the home airport in Atlanta and called employees onto the tarmac to salute one another. At AirTran gates across the U.S., banners were hung proclaiming the news.
For a carrier wanting that sort of pride, Headley says, everyone from the top executive to the ground crew must commit to the customer. And, he adds, nothing enrages passengers more than a shrug of no-information when they’re pinned at an airport gate or on a taxiway. “I flew home last Sunday,” he says, “and it was 40 minutes past departure time before they made any announcements. That might make people walk away from an airline.”
Bowen and Headley announced the 2009 results on April 12 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Read their report here.
Craig Mellow is a New York-based writer.
Comments (2)
How Good Is Your Airline?
An airline is only as good as its worst mechanic.
Posted by pat walker on April 13,2010 | 04:48 PM
An airline can have the best mechanics in the business (either on their payroll or outsourced) but if their planning department makes mistake after mistake they'll never amount to much.
I've myself experienced that with one airline time and again (and on the route I mostly fly they're the only viable option for me, the next best choice has me switching planes at least once and a nominal travel time that's almost 3 times as long as a result).
Every other flight (if not worse) is seriously delayed because of human error in aircraft assignment.
Worst case of that I experienced last year when they'd failed to have an aircraft to take nearly 200 passengers back to their homebase from halfway across the continent. The aircraft had been mistakenly rented out to another carrier from the remote location rather than them operating it themselves which it normally does.
Result was a 5 hour delay while they looked for another aircraft which had to be wetleased, readied, flown in from another country several hours away, etc. etc.
Or the time they'd forgotten to ready an aircraft for the first flight of the day. Crew and passengers arrive at the gate only to find no ground crew, no aircraft, no nothing.
To the credit of the operations department, it took them only about half an hour to ready a spare, something that would have been impossible later in the day as they don't normally keep spares around.
That I experienced last year as well, when the aircraft that was supposed to take me was grounded due to mechanical trouble. Had to wait 6 hours until another aircraft had completed its schedule for the day so it could be shifted into one extra flight.
Mechanically that airline is as sound as they get (the only accident they've had in the last 20 years or so involved a bad crosswind landing dictated by noise abatement procedures that had the aircraft skidding off the wet runway, causing slight damage to the landing gear).
Posted by JTW on April 26,2010 | 02:55 AM