Voice of the Customer: Newsweek Blog Scopes Out Readers on Best, Worst Airlines

With this post, I begin a two-part mashup in order to make some points about leadership, employee relations, and service culture within the airline industry. I’ve touched upon this before, but my take on it this time introduces some new material; i.e., the observations of customers of two airlines (Southwest and United) in a recent Newsweek blog piece. This is part 1; let’s get started:

Last week, Newsweek’s Budget Travel blog invited its readers to weigh in with their perceptions of who the best and and worst airlines in the industry are. Have a look; there’s nothing scientific about the responses of course, but I thought it might be fun to quantify and summarize the results a bit, in a little “back-of-the-envelope” analysis that turned out to be pretty interesting.

As I write this, 166 Budget Travel readers have posted “Best/ Worst” nominations in comments on the blog; many nominated more than one airline in each category, and some drilled down further to make distinctions between domestic and international carriers. Most of the commenters clearly gave this some thought. I randomly sampled about a sixth of these comments and collected some tidbits to share:

The clear winner for “Best Airline” at the Budget Travel blog is Southwest Airlines. About 30% of commenters rated Southwest as “best” or in their top three. Fewer than 1 in 25 commenters rated it as “worst” or in their bottom three. jetBlue and Alaska Airlines came in second and third place (11% and 7%, respectively).

Some of the more noteworthy comments that were made about Southwest Airlines include the following:

•  “… reasonable prices, timely flights and friendly service.”
•  “Always friendly, 99 out of 100 times on time.”
•  “I always encounter friendly staff, from the check-in agents to the flight attendants.”
•  “… consistent friendly service on numerous flights ….”
•  “Friendly, courteous, and no bag fees.”
•  “No hidden fees, easy web-site booking AND flight changes, friendly employees, a great on-time record.”
•  “Not only are their employees friendly and helpful, they seem to really enjoy their jobs and want to be there.”
•  “Friendly staff, humorous onboard announcements, great on time stats and safety record ….”
•  “… reasonable prices, timely flights and friendly service.”

Sensing the trend? Actually, even those commenters who weren’t so enamored of Southwest still used adjectives like “friendly,” “courteous,” “polite,” and “happy” to describe the service provided by their favorite airline.

Review Newsweek’s Budget Travel post, and you won’t find anyone using those words to describe service on United Airlines. In fact, among Budget Travel readers, United appears to be the polar opposite of Southwest: Over 21% of commenters identified United as “worst,” and fewer than 1 in 25 rated United as “best” or their top three. United’s 30-year “Friendly Skies” ad campaign now appears to be just an ironic memory.

United does arouse customer passions, but those passions are strongly negative, and long-lasting. The words used most often to describe United appear to be “unfriendly,” “rude,” “horrible,” and “terrible”:

•  “They deserve the 3 ‘UN’ awards — unfriendly, uncooperative, undesirable. I avoid them like the plague ….”
•  “Cranky flight attendants snapping about where I stow my bag to rude gate attendants when flights are canceled or delayed.”
•  “Disorganized, the rudest and most incompetent staff in the industry, lost luggage, cancelled flights. Avoid at all costs.”
•  “Both incompetent and rude.”
•  “The people that work there are SO rude, from the moment you check in till you get off of the plane.”
•  “Staff is often rude, delays are the rule rather than the exception ….”
•  “The customer service is rude from the airport to the skies. They think that being professional means that you can’t smile or be nice.”
•  “Their customer service agents are terrible and using award miles is a joke.”
•  “There is not enough room to share the horrible experiences I have had ….”
•  “… the rest of the legacy carriers are all so-so, except United which is horrible.”
•  “Worst, hands-down [is] United … horrible.”
•  “I had a terrible, terrible return flight from Hawaii with United and I swore that I would never fly them again — and I meant it.”
•  “These people are horrible. They even tried to separate me from my son, who was 2 at the time, by putting us in different seats.”

At least one of the runners-up in the “worst airline” category was surprising: Roughly 11% of Budget Travel readers rated Continental Airlines as “worst,” ahead of even US Airways (7%). Given that these three are close partners in United’s Star Alliance, this might be an indicator of where service performance is headed for Star customers. Continental is of course new to Star and its codeshare with United, but I wonder: Is the sharing of gates, routes, aircraft, and employees between United and Continental already having a corrosive effect on Continental?

In my next post, I’ll delve into those aspects of Southwest Airlines leadership and culture that are 1) at the heart of the most loyal customer base in the airline industry; and 2) the foundation of Southwest’s unparalleled growth and success over the past 40 years. Until then, if you want to read more airline reviews or comparative data regarding quality and customer service, check out the links in the “Reviews” section of the sidebar at right.

[Read next » Voice of the Customer, part 2: At Southwest Airlines, a Different Kind of Leadership]