A recent survey by Consumer Reports[1] found that of all the various aspects of airline travel today, seat comfort (or lack thereof) is the most important to the seasoned traveler.  This comes as no surprise as the airlines continue to update and refurbish hundreds of older aircraft to meet the high demands of its valuable customers and try to grab a hold of the top spot in consumer satisfaction. The Consumers Union survey mostly mirrors the also recently released J.D.Power & Associates 2011 Airline Satisfaction Study[2]report of both legacy and low-cost airlines in the United States.  Here are the results of both surveys:

Consumer Reports – June 2011

(Ratings scale: 0-100)

1.       Southwest (87)

2.       JetBlue (84)

3.       Alaska Airlines (79)

4.       Frontier (78)

5.       AirTran (74)

6.       Continental (72)

7.       American (65)

8.       Delta (64)

9.       United (63)

10.     US Airways (61)

     =============================================================================================================

 J.D. Power & Associates – June 2011

Traditional (Legacy) Carrier Survey

(Ratings scale: 0-1000)

1.  Alaska (680)

2.  Air Canada (678)

3.  Continental (661)*

4.  American (656)

5.  Delta (650)

6.  United (640)*

7.  U.S. Airways (625)

*United Airlines and Continental Airlines merged October 1, 2010, under United Continental Holdings, Inc. However, since they continue to operate as individually-branded carriers as they await Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval of a Single Operating Certificate, United and Continental are both included in the study and evaluated separately.

J.D. Power & Associates – June 2011

Low-Cost Carrier Survey

(Ratings scale: 0-1000)

1.       jetBlue (773)

2.       Southwest (769)

3.       WestJet (729)

4.       AirTran (690)

5.       Frontier (688)**

**On April 13, 2010, it was announced that Frontier Airlines and Midwest Airlines would be merged under the Frontier brand.  Since the merger was announced prior to the study fielding period, evaluations for both Frontier and Midwest are included in the results for Frontier Airlines.

 ================================================================================================== Strangely absent from both of these surveys is Virgin America, which is now in its fourth year of operation in the United States.  However, based on a seat comfort satisfaction survey done by SeatGuru.com[3] in 2008, Virgin America comes out on top, based on factors such as seat pitch (32” in this case) and an industry leading seat width of 19.7”, compared to United’s 18”, Continental’s 17.2” or American or Delta’s 17”.  And one must wonder, with just a 17” wide seat, how Southwest maintains its high ranking…could it be the soft leather seating? It’s undeniable that the airlines need to step up in order to compete and rank accordingly.

As aircraft age, the airlines are looking to replace and expand their fleet and if the current orders at Boeing and Airbus are any indication, the next decade in airline comfort should prove beneficial to the everyday airline passenger.

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[1] USA Today, Travel Section, “Today In The Sky,” Ben Mutzabaugh, ‘Seat comfort, fees top complaints in airline survey,’ May 11, 2011: http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/post/2011/05/consumer-reports-airline-survey/169529/1

[2] As published on JDPower.com, ’2011 North America Airline Satisfaction Survey,’ June 8, 2011: http://businesscenter.jdpower.com/JDPAContent/CorpComm/News/content/Releases/pdf/2011075-nals.pdf

[3] As published on GeekAbout.com, ‘Ranked: The 10 Most Comfortable Airline Economy Seats,’ April 21, 2008: http://www.geekabout.com/2008-04-21-446/ranked-the-most-comfortable-airline-economy-seats.html#chart

Can you match these airline slogans to its original carrier?

(Answers at the bottom of this post)

What do all of these slogans have in common?

They belong to airlines that are now defunct.  It’s a sad but true legacy in American history.  According to Wikipedia, since the deregulation of the airline industry in the US in 1978, over 200 airlines have either merged, filed for bankruptcy or gone out of business altogether.  Warren Buffet has even been quoted as saying that the airline industry is the most difficult to manage.

There have been loud calls among politicians to re-regulate the industry, thus placing pricing caps and fare restrictions squarely in the hands of the U.S. government.  As it stand right now, it appears that the suggestion is merely a threat and there doesn’t seem to be any momentum in Congress to move in that direction.  But is re-regulation a good idea?

Some would argue that the mere fact that so many airlines have failed in the past 30+ years indicates a flaw somewhere in the business model that airlines have come to build their business on.  Others point to the low-cost carriers (namely Southwest Airlines and jetBlue Airways) as examples of how the business should be run.  Is that a fair comparison?

When you look at the legacy carriers up against the low-costs, you will see stark differences.  In the case of Southwest, it operates a single aircraft type, the Boeing 737 series.  For an airline like United Airlines, it operates various configurations of six different aircraft models: Boeing’s 747-, 757-, 767-, and 777-series aircraft, along with Airbus’ A-319 and A-320 models.  Immediately you can surmise that United’s cost structure would be significantly higher.

One could argue that United should only operate one or two aircraft types to significantly lower its costs, but is that practical?  For instance, a B-747 cannot land in such places as Jackson, WY or Orange County, CA simply because the runways aren’t long enough to handle the size of the aircraft.  And a B-757 or A-320 certainly cannot fly non-stop from San Francisco to Sydney, Australia.  It’s obvious that the larger, international carriers have larger aircraft needs than those of their low-cost counterparts.

Yet time and again, people insist on comparing these LCCs to the larger carriers and try to make the argument that legacy carriers should be as successful and run as efficiently as LCCs.  Just this example alone should be evidence enough that the comparison is flawed and unsustainable.

In the nearly 100 years of flight, businessmen and women haven’t quite yet figured out the right formula to make an international airline completely successful, both financially or strategically.  The pending merger of United and Continental will be a significant test to see if the future “world’s largest airline” can be the new gold standard of airline travel.  The recent combination of Delta and Northwest has been a decent example of what can go mostly right in an airline merger.  The U.S. Airways/America West Airlines marriage is a prime example of what can go wrong.

Only time will tell which path the NEW United Airlines will take.

Answers to the above quiz:

A-9, B-10, C-4, D-8, E-2, F-7, G-5, H-3, I-1, J-6