Airlines with the most satisfied customers are the winners

What do airlines have to do with location-based entertainment facilities? We believe they illustrate the point of an article from last month's Leisure eNewsletter, What a difference 'highly satisfied' makes.

Two quality surveys were recently released on the airline industry - the J.D. Power and Associates' 2005 Airline Customers Satisfaction Index Study and the 15th annual Airline Quality Rating report, by authors Brent Bowen of the University of Nebraska-Omaha and Dean Headley of Wichita State University in Wichita. The J.D. Power's study is based on responses from 2,600 passengers who flew on a major U.S. airline between May and October 2004. The Airline Quality Rating report is based on data collected by the Department of Transportation for problems such as flight delays, mishandled baggage and general passenger complaints.

The two airlines that continue to earn profits while the legacy airlines are losing billions of dollars - Southwest and JetBlue - came in first and second in the J.D. Power's study and first and third in the Airline Quality Rating report (AirTran was ranked second).


JetBlue and Southwest win in quality surveys over the legacy airlines.

We think this is an excellent illustration of the point from What a difference 'highly satisfied' makes, in that high satisfaction levels equate to success, at least if you define success as being the most profitable in your business category.