Twenty years of service quality performance in the US airline industry

TLDR: In this paper, the authors reviewed the conceptual background for service quality as applied to the airline industry and use data from the Air Travel Consumer Report to examine airline quality performance on such key indicators as on-time arrival, customer complaints, denied boarding, and mishandled baggage to determine the trend in airline service performance over the past two decades.

Abstract: Purpose – This paper aims to review the conceptual background for service quality as applied to the airline industry and use data from the Air Travel Consumer Report to examine airline quality performance on such key indicators as on‐time arrival, customer complaints, denied boarding, and mishandled baggage to determine the trend in airline service performance over the past two decades.Design/methodology/approach – Data collected for this study included customer complaints on flight problems, ticketing, refunds, fares, customer service, advertising, and other problems, overall carrier on‐time performance, involuntary denied boardings, and mishandled baggage. Total yearly departures by carrier were obtained from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and used to normalize the service data. Service quality rates were calculated for the industry overall and by individual carrier. The total quality rate represents the sum of the following data: the percentage of late flights, total number of consumer complai...