Holiday Travel Satisfaction Report Card

Ted MarzilliCEO YouGov Direct
January 07, 2015, 9:53 PM GMT+0

Most major domestic airlines sustained their satisfaction levels throughout this past holiday season with likely travelers, although Virgin America fell to second place behind Southwest, while JetBlue dropped to fourth place, behind Alaska Air.

The top ranked domestic airlines in consumer satisfaction with likely travelers for the past six weeks included, in order, Southwest, Virgin America, Alaska Air, JetBlue and Delta.

Southwest also maintained its wide lead as the highest value perception domestic airline with this same demographic. JetBlue was in second place on value perception.

JetBlue was the only major domestic airline whose satisfaction score drop was significant, compared to 90 days prior. December marked two major news stories for the airline. Firstly, in early December, JetBlue announced that it would eliminate its “first bag checked free” policy as part of an overhaul of its pricing system as well as adding 15 more seats into its present Airbus A320 crafts. Later in the month, JetBlue flew 700 police officers for free to New York City for slain Officer Rafael Ramos’ funeral.

To put the Satisfaction levels in perspective, let’s look at the scores: a score can range from 100 to -100 with a zero score equaling a neutral position.

  • Southwest’s 64 Satisfaction score was more than double the sixth and seventh place airlines, American Airlines and Frontier, both with a 26 score.
  • United landed in eighth place (21), followed by US Airways with an 18 score.
  • The only domestic airline with a negative satisfaction score is Spirit (-18).

For this research, YouGov BrandIndex interviewed adults 18 and over who are somewhat likely, likely or very likely to take an airline travel trip over the next year.

Satisfaction Scores: Domestic Airlines