Say what? Report pegs airline passenger satisfaction at all-time high

Photo: Nam Y. Huh, Associated Press A man was dragged off a United flight on April 9, 2017, an incident...

In a bizarre quirk of timing, a top market research company capped off six weeks of highly publicized incidents involving unruly behavior by airline passengers and employees with a report that says passenger satisfaction with North American airlines is at an all-time high.

The seemingly contradictory nature of the report raises questions about what’s really going on between airlines and passengers.

“It’s impossible to think about airline customer satisfaction without replaying the recent images of a passenger being dragged from a seat, but our data shows that, as a whole, the airline industry has been making marked improvements in customer satisfaction across a variety of metrics, from ticket cost to flight crew,” Michael Taylor at JD Power, said in a statement released with the company’s 2017 North America Airline Satisfaction Study on Wednesday.

While isolated, incidents during the past six weeks have inflamed public anger:

MBA BY THE BAY: See how an MBA could change your life with SFGATE's interactive directory of Bay Area programs.

• an altercation over a stroller at San Francisco International on April 21 between an American Airlines flight attendant and a woman traveling with two young children;

• a California family being thrown off a Delta plane on April 23 for refusing to give up a paid seat on a full flight;

• an incident Thursday in which a Bay Area flier traveling from New Orleans to San Francisco said he had his ticket canceled by a United worker after the passenger began filming a heated dispute over baggage;

• a fight that erupted Sunday on a just-landed Southwest Airlines flight from Dallas to Hollywood Burbank Airport;

• and brawling at Fort Lauderdale’s airport on Monday between police and Spirit Airlines customers frustrated by labor-related cancellations.

As with the bloodied man being dragged off a United flight, all the incidents were caught on camera — which was less likely even five years ago.

Taylor says the industry has significant room for improvement. “Airlines still rank among the bottom tier of most service industries tracked by JD Power, far lower than North American rental car companies or hotels,” he said.

Neither the report nor the public’s growing reaction to the events was particularly surprising, said Brian Sumers, airline business reporter for Skift, a news site covering the travel industry.

“The study didn’t really surprise me. In a lot of ways, airline travel has gotten much better in the past five or so years,” said Sumers. He cited increased access to Wi-Fi, friendlier flight attendants, more on-time flights and fewer canceled flights. “It’s actually a pretty good time to fly.”

But given the sheer volume of inflammatory incidents involving an industry that Americans love to hate, the recent public outrage is predictable, he said.

“In the last six weeks, flying has been a disaster in the United States. I do think that we’re in a little bit of a cycle and that these things are building off of each other.

“Any time that there’s a disturbance on an airplane or at the gate or in the airport lobby, somebody takes out an iPhone and films it, and that’s normal, but it seems to get everybody pretty excited and things that might have just fallen away in the past and nobody would have known are now on video and have this tendency to go viral.”

It probably doesn’t help that, in general, passengers are more tense.

“A situation that might not bother somebody walking down the street or in a shopping mall, say somebody bumps elbows — you can sort of let that go on the ground.”

“But for whatever reason, you get on an airplane, people are anxious, they’re stressed, they’re worried, they want to know if there’s room to put up their bags, and they have much shorter fuses on an airplane.”

The satisfaction report attributed “lower costs, fewer problems, satisfaction with crews” as reasons for the rating, citing that the average North American airfare fell 8.5 percent in 2016 to $349. “Improved on-time performance, fewer lost bags, historically low bump rates and high scores for flight crews also contribute to the overall increase in airline customer satisfaction,” the report stated.

The relationship between passengers and airlines at the moment involves at least three issues that overlap but that don’t necessarily affect one another: the study that measures satisfaction; periods of public outrage based on a series of isolated events; and incidents involving “unruly passengers,” which are on the rise, according to the International Air Transport Association.

In 2015, the most recent year in which there are records, there were 10,854 cases involving unruly passengers, one incident for every 1,205 flights, according to the International Air Transport Association, a trade group that represents 265 airlines which carry 83 percent of total air traffic. By comparison, there were 49,084 incidents total from 2007 to 2015, one for every 1,613 flights.

The majority of reports are Level 1 incidents “which are verbal in nature,” whereas 11 percent of reports relate to level 2 incidents, “which involve physical aggression to others or damage to the aircraft.” Not surprisingly, intoxication involving drugs or alcohol accounted for 23 percent of all cases.

The numbers are “definitely rising,” said Perry Flint, a spokesman for the group.

“We have not tried to figure out why they’re rising. What we’re really focused on is the regulatory global level enabling changing international agreements that give teeth to enforcement,” said Flint. “We just want it to stop.”

Taylor of JD Power told The Chronicle it’s important to differentiate between the satisfaction study, which is based on real customers and their recent experience, and the image and reputation of the airline, which the company also tracks.

“The image is going to be impacted by other perceptions,” he said, including posted videos showing issues or altercations related to an airline. In the end, the satisfaction study is probably more important to airlines, he said.

“If they meet or exceed expectations, then the passenger is going to be satisfied, and the concerns that they have over seeing a video might fade over time.”

Spud Hilton is the editor of San Francisco Chronicle’s Travel. Email: shilton@sfchronicle.com. Twitter and Instagram: @SpudHilton