You were selected by an airline where you obviously have lots of status - they feel you know enough about flying them to have a deep insight into their business. So the good news is that this is an airline that is trying to understand its customers. The bad news is they won't listen anyway.

The airline business is a study in constrasts. Run mainly by males with finance training, airlines have an inherent difficulty comprehending how to be a service business. See the impact low cost carriers have had to see what I mean. Travelers, seeing mainline airlines offer nothing better than miles, have decided to switch to low cost airlines in droves because these airlines offer essentially the same thing for a lot less. Consumers are highly rational and NOT stupid.

Oh to be a fly on the wall at your focus group. Asking a passenger to describe their perfect airline in 90 minutes is flat out silly, IMHO. Frequent fliers spend hundreds of hours on board and exposed to the airline. Airlines would be far better served by having their best customers provide feedback continuoulsy. How do you fit in all your thoughts into 90 minutes - shared by the way with a bunch of other people?

It will be a great exposure to the cost benefit of qualititative data input over quantitative data input - take the money, you will be thinking about the experience for a while. Please update us on what happened and what you thought of it.