rankourabu

JD Power 2024: Mission Accomplished, rock bottom reached for PY and J

<Cue The usual how flawed the survey is discussion.>

YOWgary

I struggle to get worked up about a survey that says the worst grade in the class was a D, when the top grade in the class was a C-minus.

More than that, though, my thing with this is that this bar graph just doesn't really say anything, it reads like page 1 of 40. Do all these respondents think United's seat, catering, IFE selection and OTP are all a flat 1.3% better than AC's? Does AC get dragged down in ratings due to poor performance in any particular area?

Is there any information available on how Alaska managed to score so well in Premium Economy, without, you know... having a Premium Economy cabin?

If there's ten more pages to this report, I'd be curious to see it in depth. Without that, I just can't tell what kind of discussion this is meant to prompt.

rankourabu

Its not meant to prompt discussion.
It creates great headlines/clickbait tho
Air Canada among lowest-ranked North American airlines for customer service: study
Air Canada Ranked Last In Customer Satisfaction Survey
Air Canada scores low on customer satisfaction: survey
Customers ranked Air Canada dismally out of all airlines in North America | Urbanized
Air Canada ranks near bottom on customer satisfaction: survey - Business News

YOWgary

So... you don't have a point, you don't want to discuss this, and you're openly calling it pointless clickbait?

That's... tiresome.

Jumper Jack

I am just guessing.. but I suspect OTP is big factor?
I have only flown United this year and i certainly did not feel the Y cabin is better vs AC in anyway.

Transpacificflyer

I disagree and find the results useful. However, I understand your criticism, and to that, I offer that the results are valuable because they show a deterioration in customer satisfaction compared to 2023.
All of the airlines had a marked reduction. See 2023 results below. Air Canada has had a pronounced deterioration in its rating.
The top grade is indeed a C, but the low grade is barely above a D- grade, 4 levels down. The results reflect a cumulative rating. 9,582 pax were sampled over a 12 month period.The sampling looked at the entire air travel experience including; Reservation, Check-In, Boarding, Baggage, Aircraft, Flight Crew, In-Flight Services, Costs & Fees. The results validate my perception based upon my own experience, that Air Canada in the past year has cut back on catering, has had an erosion in performace on activities such as baggage delivery timeliness. I have had more seat and IFE malfunctions in the past year, than I had in the previous 3 years combined.
And yes, Alaska does have a Premium Economy with perks.

EdmFlyBoi

The surveys are interesting but there is always the discussion on methodology and how the comparisons are actually performed. From a study perspective, the only real way to create an accurate comparison is to take a list of fliers and have them fly all the products followed by questions related to the specific items that are to be measured. The fliers would also have to likely experience multiple flights on the carrier, on multiple aircraft, to actually create valid comparisons.

Anecdotally, I have flown UA, DL, WN, WS, and AC. The only J experiences are DL, UA, and AC. The rankings would depend on what exactly the questions are. If it is food, then DL would be 1st, but this was only one flight. The J seats are all pretty good - I liked the DL seat on A339 but I haven't flown their older seats, which are apparently not very good. I like UA's seat and it is pretty similar across all of their long haul aircraft. AC's seat is also pretty good, though I don't like the A330 seat because it is narrow, but more because AC really went with the cheapest version in terms of features (and that is an AC choice which they could have approached differently). The cabin crews on the DL and UA flights I have flown in J long haul have been really quite good, but my N is pretty low compared to AC. AC and UA both have great bedding, which is something I really value - this was recently highlighted on OMAAT (https://onemileatatime.com/insights/...usiness-class/). AC's bedding is way better than many of the European carriers, especially AF and LH, which for me is quite important. The lounge experience is really variable. UA Polaris in IAH was terrific, but again my N is one. Apparently the Polaris lounges in places like EWR have the same crowding issues as AC's YYZ lounges. DL's lounge in SEA was really meh, but again my N is one. AC's lounges in YVR are generally pretty good, though the domestic lounge needs an update badly, which is coming (so AC knows they need to address this). Yes AC has densified the lounges, but I haven't waited to get into the domestic YVR lounge in a while now, which is a good thing. YYZ and YUL are a bit different, and this summer may again highlight the shortage of lounge space.

All in all, the surveys are interesting, but are of course flawed. If I was AC, I would look at this and go "the surveys are flawed but we can likely do better". This then raises internal questions for the carrier on what are the things that other carriers do well and how AC could potentially address those things. AC also has to evaluate whether the cost of making those changes are worth undertaking and how the other challenges in service delivery impacts those choices. If AC continues to have consistency in the long haul J seat (getting the former SQ FIN's refurbished as an example), continues to have great bedding, and makes further progress with OTP and customer service (phone, electronic, and in person), I am likely willing to forgive the occasional crappy crew and terrible food. But that's my opinion. A valid survey would have a large enough sample size to account for variation in individuals answering the question.

The improvement in OTP is a really a big one. I am personally willing to forgive some other things if they get to where I am going as promised, especially if I don't have to build in long layovers because I am worried about IRROPS. This upcoming summer is going to be interesting in terms of how AC manages their hubs, especially YYZ and YUL.

AC's leadership does say they are continually focussed on improving, in particular, the premium experience. I guess the proof will be in what they continue to do over time, especially when surveys like this come out which references issues that may be relevant to the overall customer experience.

YOWgary

As I said above, I could find this useful if it broke down "thousands of people think AC's Premium Economy seat is about the same as anyone else's, but boy do they hate the catering", or "people actually find the PE service all right, but then they get so mad about OTP that it ruins the whole thing".

Do you think it's meaningful to give a single ranking to "business class" that averages out Delta One and a 717 regional seat? Or Signature Class and the old A320 business seats that are now so beat up that one of them literally fell apart in my hands? What do we learn from a single number here?

...your ratings of the blankets illustrate beautifully my objection to blanket ratings.

Not shocking; the "gosh, it's nice to be flying again" wave has worn off and reality's setting back in.

...so that would actually be 3 levels down, not 4. Why is it useful to talk about how big the difference almost was?

You fly enough to have a solid sample size; when's the last time you had an identical level of satisfaction with all of these things at once? You've already mentioned a few areas that you found more irksome than others. Again, I'm not saying the survey is wrong, I'm saying the way it's presented doesn't tell us anything useful.

Fair enough; in the same period of time, I find the catering no better or worse, I find luggage has gotten vastly better, and I've been surprised to encounter zero seat and IFE issues, which I've previously found common. I don't mean to suggest AC's fixed its IFE or its deflating seats, or that either of us is right or wrong - only that your and my reports on these issues demonstrate the flaws in a small sample size.

https://www.alaskaair.com/content/tr.../premium-class

This is the same product Delta sells as Comfort+, just behind its Premium Select cabin. It would be perfectly useful to compare Delta and Alaska's offerings in the product they both offer - and which AC doesn't offer in quite the same way.

Last thought: looking at the Economy ranking you listed, I think it's terrific that so many people are happy fist-fighting their way aboard a Southwest flight. I'm not sure what we're meant to learn from a category in which 8 of 11 airlines are "below average", and Alaska, Westjet, United, Air Canada and American are all less than 1.8% apart.

lcohen999

UA Y and AC Y are not all that different.

Same kind of service, different BoB. Some of those E+ seats are very nice. New cabin config is nice. WIfi seems more consistent on UA.

EdmFlyBoi

Everything you have highlighted is totally reasonable. What I was trying to emphasize is that the construction of a totally valid study/survey is really challenging considering all the variation that exists (as you have pointed out). I was also trying to highlight how AC might approach this. You mentioned that AC has improved on a number of things - which I would agree with. This would suggest that AC is paying attention to some kind of data, whether it is their own data, or external data such as these studies (which have their issues). More likely it is a combination of a number of sources which would improve the information (as a meta-analysis does, although I am not suggesting that AC is carrying out a meta-analysis).

AC could reject this out of hand, which some would support, because the results come from a terrible methodology. I would argue that their C-Suite weighs the validity against what they perceive as real concerns over product and service delivery. A good organization incorporates as much data as possible to assess their progress. It seems AC is doing this based on the some of the improvements we have seen such as OTP and some of the product reliability. They may say the study sucks and move on. But there is public perception. I'd argue that the public perception of WS has gone hugely downhill. This may have little impact on their bottom line but ignoring it entirely does have some potential longer term consequences to the bottom line (I would think).

My perception of AC is that they are working on things. As a long standing SE, I'd argue that my perception is important. Yes these surveys are really flawed. But they are not going to go away and customers do read the headlines.

rankourabu

When your starting point is less than half your flights on time, then yes, (one month of) three quarters of your flights on time is a huge improvement.

mapleg

My takeaway? Start considering Delta more seriously.

timeout58

Is OTP an Air Canada thing or an airport authority thing?

YOWgary

When they start offering YOW-YVR - or YOW-anywhere - I'll give it some thought.

rankourabu

Air Canada OTP is consistently below the ontime statistics for their hubs
AC On-Time Performance (OTP) Discussion/Complaints - Systemic Issues (2022 onwards)