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University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index recently conducted a customer survey about how satisfied are they with airlines industry and it was revealed that only it got 62 points out of 100. These results are for the first quarter of 2008.

The score is lowest since 2001 and shows how deeply customers are dissatisfied with U.S. airlines.
This is due to increased ticket prices as a direct result of soaring cost of fuel jet, coupled with overbooking flights, charging extra fees and flight cancellations for safety checks.

US Airways Group Inc and UAL Corp’s United Airlines, which have recently been in merger talks, received the lowest scores in the poll: 54 and 56, respectively.

Continental Airlines fell to an all time lowest score of 62 which is 10 percent less than previous one. Northwest Airlines, which has agreed to be acquired by Delta Air Lines Inc, also didn’t do very well and fell 7 percent to 57, its lowest score since 2001.

According to Claes Fornell, founder of the survey:

It’s more of the same — and it’s getting worse. There is very little choice, which explains how you can get away with scores in the 50s. Those are not sustainable on any type of competitive level — they are lower than the Internal Revenue Service.

It is interesting to note that Southwest Airlines leads the industry in customer satisfaction for a 15th straight year, improving 4 percent to 79 points.

Delta Air Lines, up 2 percent to 60, and AMR Corp’s American Airlines, up 3 percent to 62, were the only other major airlines to post gains in customer satisfaction.
David Castelveter, a spokesman for the chief trade group of major U.S. airlines, the Air Transport Association (ATA) said:

Survey was a disappointment but not a surprise. We are working very hard to find ways to improve the service we provide to our customers, especially given the fact we are going to pay about $18 billion more for fuel in 2008 than we did in 2007.

The survey revealed that most of the problems were related to flight delay which results in a ripple effect as one delay can cause other problems.