Airline Industry Loses 12 Customers Every Hour


The airline industry loses 12 customers every hour, according to a new survey that shows nearly half of all passengers are unhappy with their flights.

The report, released by the Airline Customer Advocate, found that 46 per cent of passengers were dissatisfied with their flights.

Airline’s Responses

“The airline industry has done very little in the last 10 years to improve the flying experience,” Mr Sims said.

“In fact many airlines appear to be going backwards.”

Mr Sims said there was a “clear disconnect” between what airlines thought and what was actually happening for passengers.

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. airline industry is losing about 12 customers every hour, the president of the Air Transport Association of America said Wednesday.

The Airlines Reporting Corporation, the organization that processes more than 95% of all US airline ticket transactions, released a report this week with some troubling data for the industry.

According to ARC’s analysis of data gathered in 2015, the airline industry lost 12 customers every hour last year. In total, the number of passengers who chose not to fly with US airlines increased by 1.9 million. This is particularly surprising given that the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics reports that last year was a record-breaking year for air travel in the US, with a total of 775 million passengers flying on US airlines.

So what is causing this disconnect between overall passenger volume and repeat customers?

It’s almost enough to make you want to drive.

The airline industry has a customer service problem. A bad one. Research by the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA) revealed that airlines lose 12 customers every hour because of poor customer service. That’s more than 100,000 people every year who are so fed up with how they were treated that they vow never to fly that airline again.

“Customer service is a big part of our experience,” says Chuck Thacker, president and CEO of the MSPA. “The airline industry is really struggling with it.”

October 18, 2013: The U.S. airline industry has lost 12 customers per hour since 2008, according to a new report from the American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), which notes that airlines rank at the bottom of all industries it measures (74 on a 100-point scale).

The ACSI report notes that airline satisfaction is up 4.3% over 2012, but down 8.5% since 2008. “Consumer discontent with airlines is nothing new,” says Claes Fornell, ACSI chairman and founder. “But as the industry makes more money, people expect better service and fewer fees.”

Customer satisfaction with major U.S. airlines is up 2.6% to an ACSI score of 69 for 2013, but still ranks dead last among 43 industries measured by the survey (69 is the lowest score of any industry measured by the ACSI). The Federal Aviation Administration’s data show that airline passenger traffic has increased about 2% annually since 2008, yet satisfaction has been dropping during that same period — meaning that a growing number of passengers unhappy with their experience are flying on U.S. airlines.

“The fact that satisfaction with airlines continues to fall despite rising travel volume means that airlines are losing business,” says David VanAmburg, managing

There is no shortage of surveys ranking the best airlines, but a new one from Temkin Group puts a different spin on things.

The 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings ranks the customer experience of 246 companies across 19 industries, including airlines. The results aren’t pretty for fliers.

According to the survey, five of the bottom seven companies in customer service are airlines. US Airways came in dead last, with a rating of 57 percent. In other words, it would take 43 more points to reach 100 percent. That’s like getting an F on your report card.

Southwest Airlines topped the list at 72 percent, which is still not great considering that they’re dealing with frustrated airline passengers everyday.

Temkin Group says that their results show that airlines are losing 12 customers every hour because of poor service.

I don’t know if the airline industry will ever recover from the recent series of PR disasters, but it should at least try to.

If you fly regularly, you’ve probably noticed that things are better than they were two or three years ago. There has been a lot of improvement in on-time performance, and fewer planes have been lost. I’ve flown about a million miles over the past three years, and I can’t recall a single incident where my flight was canceled or seriously delayed due to mechanical problems.

I’m lucky; my job lets me fly in premium classes on long-haul international flights with good airlines like Singapore Airlines and Emirates. But even coach class has improved. I recently flew from New York to Mexico City on JetBlue, which has been consistently voted the best domestic airline in several surveys. It’s still not quite as good as Southwest, but it’s now a lot better than what Continental and United used to be like.

If you’ve flown domestically this summer, you may have noticed another thing that’s improved: the number of empty seats. Especially if you’re flying westbound on Sunday nights (the hardest time to fill planes), there’s a good chance that your flight won’t be full. And when domestic flights are nearly empty,


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