2010 Airline Quality Rating Report: Industry Is Improving

Capping the second year in a row of generally improved major U.S. airline performance, the 20th annual national Airline Quality Rating ranked Hawaiian Airlines as the overall industry leader (among 18 air carriers studied) when measured in terms of operational efficiencies and customer service. The annual performance rating is a joint research project funded as part of faculty research activities at Purdue University and Wichita State University.

According to the report, the industry improved in three of four major elements: on-time performance, baggage handling and customer complaints. Indicated as the sole lagging indicator was a performance decline in the denied-boarding category, although apparently the situation hasn’t eroded to the point prospective passengers need to assume a dog’s persona and be content to occupy a pet carrier in the belly of the plane (as suggested in televised Boost Mobile cellular telephone commercials).

Holding down the bottom spot in this year’s ratings was American Eagle. Interestingly, Spirit Airlines – the current bane of carry-on-baggage-toting passengers – was not included in the recently completed nationwide airline evaluation; the Airline Quality Rating 2010 summarizes month-by-month quality ratings only for U.S. airlines required to report performance by virtue of having at least 1% of domestic scheduled-service passenger revenue during 2009.

This year’s Airline Quality Rating industry score shows overall improvement in quality relative to customer-performance criteria over the course of 2009. Of the 17 carriers rated in both 2008 and 2009, all but Alaska Airlines had improved Airline Quality Rating scores for 2009. Particularly noteworthy was the fact that Atlantic Southeast posted the largest gain in overall score, while Northwest Airlines registered the smallest gain in AQR score for 2009.

As an industry, the AQR criteria showed: on-time arrival percentage better (79.4% in 2009, as compared to 76.0% in 2008); mishandled baggage rates declining to 3.88 per 1,000 passengers in 2009 from 5.19 per 1,000 passengers in 2008; and consumer-complaint rates dropping to 0.97 per 100,000 passengers in 2009 from 1.15 per 100,000 passengers in 2008.

On the other hand, involuntary denied boardings per passenger served increased to 1.19 per 10,000 passengers in 2009, up from 1.10 per 10,000 passengers in 2008.

Finally, of the 5,943 complaints registered with DOT regarding the 18 U.S. domestic carriers rated (AirTran, Alaska, American, American Eagle, Atlantic Southeast, Comair, Continental, Delta, ExpressJet, Frontier, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Mesa, Northwest, SkyWest, Southwest, United and USAir), 42.5% were for either flight problems or baggage-handling problems.

Taking all airlines together, the AQR score for the industry improved from a level of -1.63 in 2008 to -1.27 in 2009. Also, with 16 airlines showing year-to-year AQR score improvement, it was reported that performance continued to reflect gains seen in 2008 as opposed to industry-score declines seen from 2003 to 2007.