In an Era of Turbulence, Airline Satisfaction Rising

Do we still hate the airlines? Or only some of them?

It seems like only yesterday that the clamor for “passenger rights” reached sonic-boom level, as overloaded, overscheduled planes struggled through labor strife and bad weather and languished on tarmacs waiting for takeoff.

Remember the prisoners of Northwest Airlines--thousands of passengers detained inside jets for up to eight hours at the snowbound Detroit airport in 1999?

Much has happened since then. In this age of terrorists, “air rage” has a new, darker meaning. And we’re mellowing toward the airlines we once railed against, if recent polls and statistics are to be believed.

We may not love to fly, but we’re complaining less about it, and we have a higher opinion of the industry.

Sixty-three percent of Americans think airlines “generally do a good job ... of serving their customers,” according to a Harris Interactive survey of more than 1,000 adults that was taken in May and published last month.

That is a hefty increase from the 51% who had a positive view in last year’s survey, taken about the same time, although still below figures for 2000 (66%), 1999 (71%) and 1998 (78%).

The increase moved airlines from ninth to fourth place in the survey’s rankings of 13 industries. We appear to like airlines more than computer, drug, telephone and oil companies but less than banks (No. 1), hospitals (2) and car manufacturers (3).

The third annual Fortune/Roper Corporate Reputation Index, issued earlier this year based on interviews in January and February with 17,000 U.S. adults, found a similar trend. “The public was much more positive than in the previous two years,” says John Gilfeather, vice chairman of Roper- ASW in Harrison, N.Y.

The approval rating of the airline industry increased from 6.2 to 6.9 this year on a 1-to-10 index where 10 is the highest. The index is based on respondents’ overall impression of companies, not specifics like leg room and flight delays, Gilfeather explains.

Although improving, airlines are still toward the lower end of the spectrum of the 51 industries in the index, he adds.

Gilfeather and Humphrey Taylor, chairman of the Harris Poll/ Harris Interactive, say they can only speculate on the cause of the airlines’ newfound popularity; the reasons weren’t in their surveys.

In the Roper poll, hotels and financial services also climbed up the index, making Gilfeather suspect a Sept. 11 effect. After the terrorist attacks, “I think people said, ‘We’ve got to stick together. It’s wrong to be hypercritical of anybody,’ ” especially industries hurt by the crisis, Gilfeather says.

Like Gilfeather, Taylor suspects a post-9/11 sympathy vote. He also notes that the decline in passenger traffic may have reduced rates of lost baggage and flight delays.

Indeed it has.

In May--the most recent month for which statistics are available--major U.S. airlines logged the lowest rate of mishandled baggage reports from passengers since the U.S. Department of Transportation began collecting the statistic 14 years ago. The figure, which includes complaints of lost, damaged, delayed or stolen baggage, dropped to 3.32 reports per 1,000 passengers from 3.85 in May 2001.

In fact, most types of consumer complaints in the DOT report, from “bumped” passengers to bad customer service, were down in May. The total rate of complaints per 100,000 passengers on major airlines dropped more than 27% between May 2001 and May this year. It was not just that there were fewer complaints because fewer people have been flying since Sept. 11; the rate per 100,000 passengers also was down and has been throughout this year.

The DOT report is even shorter on explanations than the pollsters, but it’s hard to escape this conclusion: Things are getting better in the air. Still I wonder: Are things really getting better, or are we just getting more tolerant?

“Part of this is illusory,” based on a change in expectations, says Rolfe Shellenberger, a Palm Desert-based travel consultant and longtime airline expert.

Passengers, expecting a huge amount of hassle at the airport, are pleasantly surprised when they don’t find it and are therefore less inclined to complain, in his view. Also, some of the anger that passengers once directed at airlines “has been displaced onto the security screening situation,” says David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Assn.

But it does appear that fewer flights--about 20% fewer since Sept. 11, by some estimates--mean smaller crowds at the airport, fewer delays and therefore more satisfied customers. Most of our attitude toward the airlines is determined by whether our flight is on time, say Shellenberger and Mike Taylor, senior director of travel for marketing information services company J.D. Power and Associates in Westport, Conn. Taylor believes jets are spending less time parked on the tarmac because of lighter traffic, even though DOT statistics on late departures, which are based on when the plane leaves the gate, have improved only marginally.

Our attitudes toward some low-fare and smaller airlines border on cuddly, compared with how we feel about the majors, according to statistics reported in the monthly Consumer Reports Travel Letter, whose July issue analyzes DOT complaint rates for 2001.

Aloha, JetBlue, Midwest Express and Hawaiian fell below the majors’ average of 2.09 complaints per 100,000 passengers. Southwest, which is low-fare but also among the 10 largest airlines, logged by far the lowest complaint rate among the 14 smaller and discount airlines for which the newsletter gives statistics.

Not all the smaller airlines fared as well. AirTran Airways, American Trans Air, Frontier, Midway and National were among those with a higher complaint rate than the majors’ average, according to the newsletter.

We seem to be voting with our boarding passes too. Last month all the majors except Alaska Airlines (up 3.2%) and Southwest (up 4%) continued to carry fewer passengers than during the same month last year. By contrast, AirTran was up 23.4%, Frontier rose 5.5% and JetBlue rose 110%.

Smaller airlines are appealing because they often have better fares--and simpler fare structures--than the majors, fly out of smaller, less congested airports and have newer fleets, among other advantages, notes Consumer Reports Travel Letter.

And then there’s the question of expectations. “Southwest doesn’t promise much, but what they promise, they really deliver,” says Stempler of the Air Travelers Assn.

In other words, if you expect less, you complain less.

Which might explain much of the current public sentiment on airlines.

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Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.