01697315

Component

This study explores the relationship between passenger travel experience and service quality in the airline industry for ten geographical regions across the globe. The authors extract 40,510 passenger reviews and rating information from Skytrax dataset between October 2011 and January 2018. To understand whether and to what extent passenger travel experience varies across ten regions, they test several analytical techniques including sentiment score analysis of the reviews and path analysis. The results support the hypothesis that the customer origins impact travel experience, perception, and evaluation of airline services. More specifically, North American passengers complain more about their national airline, while Eastern and South Eastern Asian passengers are more satisfied with Asian airlines. North American passengers care essentially about the money they pay for their flight. They give less attention to inflight services, as they view flying more as a basic way of commute rather than a special experience. On the contrary, Eastern Asian passengers care more about inflight services in their overall opinion of their flights. Across all geographical regions, seat comfort is the most important factor to evaluate the value for money of the flight, while cabin staff service is the main feature to rate overall flight experience.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AV020 Standing Committee on Aviation System Planning.

19-03231

English

9p

2019

Transportation Research Board 98th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Airlines; Attitudes; Customer satisfaction; Passengers; Quality of service; Regions

Expectations

Aviation; Passenger Transportation; Planning and Forecasting

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2019 Paper #19-03231

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 7 2018 9:23AM