The US domestic airline industry has been staging a modest comeback in leisure traveler customer satisfaction since last September.
Capitalizing on this trend, Southwest, Delta and JetBlue retain their top spots as the domestic airlines with the highest customer satisfaction among air travelers since one year ago in YouGov BrandIndex’s rankings.
United Airlines moved up one spot from a year ago to #4 while Alaska Air slipped to #5.
The biggest satisfaction perception improvers among domestic airlines in the view of leisure flight travelers over the past year are (in order) Southwest, Virgin America, Delta, U.S. Airways, and United.
For the satisfaction ranking, the top domestic airlines were measured with YouGov BrandIndex’s satisfaction score, which asks respondents: "Are you a satisfied customer?" The ranking was filtered for all respondents are adults 18+ and have flown on a domestic leisure air trip at least once in the past year. The domestic airlines sector includes brands such as Southwest, Delta, JetBlue, United, Alaska Air, Continental, Virgin America and Northwest.
YouGov BrandIndex measurement scores range from 100 to -100 and are compiled by subtracting negative feedback from positive. A zero score means equal positive and negative feedback.
In ranking domestic airlines, Southwest’s satisfaction score of 39 is almost twice that of its nearest competitor, Delta, with its score of 21. JetBlue has a satisfaction score of 12, United with 11 and Alaska Air with 10.
The domestic airline sector had been in a prolonged leisure traveler satisfaction slump since early March 2010, when its satisfaction score was 17. Since that time, the score has trended downward, bottoming out last September with a 9 score. Since then, the score has rebounded somewhat to 13.
