AS drops 6 places in 2010 Airline Quality Report
 

Every year Purdue and Wichita State complies an Airline Quality Report [AQR] and they use four data sets from the FAA [On time arrival performance, Involuntary Denied Boarding (IDB), mishandled luggages, and customer complaints].

The link to the report: 2010 Airline Quality Report

My synopsis pertaining to AS based on the report is in the third quote below...

Thoughts?

P.S. I do think highly of AS and am quite surprised to see AS's score drop... However, numbers do not lie, even though we wish they do sometimes :p

Interesting. I don't have a ton of experience on most of the airlines ranked higher than AS, but I generally only have good things to say about AS. QX is a different story though, and I suppose you have to lump that in with AS.

Seems Strange...
 

I guess as another member stated, I don't really have a ton of experience with a lot of other airlines as my flying is about 99% with either AS/QX/UA/UX. An occasional flight with AC & LH.

My experience w/AS & QX is that IF there is a problem, I am usually re-accommodated ASAP & given either miles or discount codes (both sometimes)...

Facts don't lie?!?!?
 

I ask you are these 4 criteria why you choose AS for your travels? There is so much more to the quality of an airline than these selective criteria.

IDB's killed the score
 

As we suspected with the change from the BTT to a $ voucher played havoic on IDB's...

Here's the text on AS:

Mostly due to an increase in involuntary denied boardings - I can live with that. Only buy a ticket on a flight with seats reservable on the seat map, check-in early and get to the gate on-time - should protect you from any denials.

This is not a factor in my measure of AS quality.

As I have said numerous times on various forums, I think this report is worthless. It has nothing to with how AS scored, as I said the same thing even in years when AS was ranking at or near the top. The problem is that the authors plug the data into this phoney baloney formula which places completely arbitrary weights on the different performance metrics. It's really comparing apples to oranges.

As others pointed out, the only reason AS saw its score drop in 2009 was due to the increase in denied boardings. Just based on the other three categories (complaints, mishandled baggage and on-time performance), they would have ranked as one of the top carriers. Over the past 12 months, AS is the #1 on-time carrier in America (excluding Hawaiian), now averaging close to 87%. However, the standard deviation for on-time performance is much smaller between carriers compared to something like involuntary denied boardings, as a few airlines don't oversell and by no small coincidence also all score at the top of the report. So, the range of inputs for IDBs would be between 0 and 3 (that's per 100,000 people), where as for on-time performance, the standard deviation is extremely small, with nearly all carriers scoring between 0.7 and 0.85). 0.7 being 70%. Aside from which, the authors never bother to consider whether the delays are under the control of the airlines are not, even though the DOT publishes that data, so again it's basically meaningless. For baggage handling, the range of inputs falls between about 2 and 10 mishandled bags per 1,000, so the SD is probably at least 2. Anyone else see a problem with the formula in the report?

All I'm saying is that the study looks at data that is of dubious significance, and furthermore, places an unreasonably high weight on involuntary denied boardings. Would anyone really choose not to fly with a carrier based on a 1 in 50,000 chance of being denied boarding? Especially since it generally only is a concern to people checking in near the cut-off time anyway.

You really shouldn't bash empirical data like you do. Multivariate research does look like a phoney baloney formula, but it actually has some merit. Of course, as you point out, there may be some bias with weight given, but it is more than likely minimal.
According to their study, it is plausible that AS dropped as it did. Why not accept that? (if you want to wrack up $ for IDBs come fly SJC/SEA, because when I do there are almost always two requests - though it's slowing down now with our bigger planes back).
However, I agree that no "real" person would base their choice on a survey such as this. They think of the soft product or hard product.
Still, they got little justice when the CBS evening news merely mentioned their ranking without stating what the survey was about, but I think they did get recognition for being number two in on-time from CNN.

This is a ranking based on factors that can be quantitatively measured and, at the same time, are publicly available.

It's a case of the survey (or at least it's title) drawing broad conclusions from specific data just because it's what's out there, not because it's what matters to customers or it's what should be measured for "airline quality." :td:

Having IDB blow up by 300+% isn't good. That's a number of upset customers who don't get to fly at the times they want.

As an additional reference point, I clocked up $900 in VDB credits in the space of a little over a month- during January and February, when things are at their slackiest in the industry. Keep in mind that IDB happens AFTER VDB.

Perhaps the authors should change the survey to be more of "performance" oriented rather than "quality" since 3 out of 4 criteria are based on performance [on time, mishandled bags, and IDBs]...

The biggest problem with JD Powers, SkyTrax, and some other rankings is that it is based on customer surveys... The biggest flaw with this kind of system is customers [almost all the time] would only do a survey when they are dissatisfied or extremely happy... Customers who received the service they expected are more likely not to fill out a survey... It is amazing how bias can really skew the data and mislead people sometimes.

However, I agree that this report does not judge how we as customers perceive AS since everybody has different needs and expectations. It is just more of a statistical data report of how airlines performed in 2009 compared to 2008.

AS's average # of customer complaints went up slightly, but still almost half of the industry average, which is superb IMO. However, when basing a survey on "quality" I think this category should have more weight over mishandled baggage and IDBs, since the latter two categories is more performance based. Perhaps, the report should be an Airline Performance Report instead of Airline Quality Report. Nonetheless, I still think this report does have some merits and can be used effectively to improve some processes.

IDB is probably the easiest issue to resolve out of all four, so I am confident AS will rebound strongly in that area in 2010 :)

If you do not like my title, let me know and I'll change it :p

I'm actually going to bet against that, given my experiences so far in 2010, and given that AS is traditionally conservative on expanding capacity dramatically. I think we're likely to head north of 80% on load factors. It may be that AS figures that some IDBs and VDBs are the cost of doing that.

Yeah, technically VDBs and IDBs results from overselling of seats [based on data on % of people that does not show up for their flight], but that can be reduced by reducing the % of seats AS oversells per flight... Hard? No... Requires significant changes? No...

Or they could increase $$$ in compensation for VDBs to attract more volunteers to help reduce IDBs.

Of course, this comes with some complexities, because sometimes simply reducing the # of seats they oversell can result in some loss in potential revenues... They will need to weight the cost of doing VDBs and IDBs [including potential loss of future sales from customers who were involuntarily denied boarding] and the revenues lost when a plane leaves with 2 or 3 empty seats.

It really shows how a single aberration, in AS's case IDB, can really skew the results. I'd be willing to bet that most of us are at relatively low risk of being IDBed, but for someone who does get bumped I'm sure it makes leaves a marked impression on their perception of the airline's "quality."

If you break down the other categories, AS has the lowest rate of complaints of any of the legacies, and their on-time performance is at the top of the heap. Fort mishandled bags, they're right at the middle of the pack.

So, if you never get IDBed and never check bags, AS is the #1 legacy carrier in the qualities that matter for most of us.

I'm a scientist...I have no problem with multivariate research or the use of empirical data. My beef is that the authors actually don't take full advantage of the data that is published by the DOT. Also the authors garner publicity by making largely unsubstantiated claims about the airline industry in general. As far as the data analysis is concerned, the problem is that by just taking the raw data from the DOT and plugging it into a formula, the ranges of values for the different criteria are incompatible with one another. Instead of looking at overall on-time percentage, they should look at the percentage of flights delayed due to airline-related factors, the percentage cancelled and the percentage left sitting on the tarmac for 3 hours or more. It's all public data, published every month, and inclusion of such factors would make the report more meaningful, as it would be objectively looking solely at instances of service failures (along with lost bags and IDBs).
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Regarding what the other poster said about denied boardings, I wonder if it's not so much the switch to $-off vouchers as it is just that flights are running fuller than they were last year, and it's very hard to reaccommodate pax. A lot of customers might accept "Ill give you $300 and put you on a flight in two hours" but not, "I'll give you $300 and put you on a flight tomorrow evening." I actually think $300/$400 vouchers AS offers are around industry standard, but apparently customers are not going for it. They probably need to offer greater compensation for overnight delays, and also, they could help prevent the problem by just not overselling the last flight of the day.

The interesting thing is that if you look at Air Travel Consumer Report, you can determine the total denied boarding rate (voluntary + involuntary denied boardings combined). Surprisingly, AS has a significantly lower rate of denied boardings compared the industry average (around 8 per 100,000 compared to 13 per 100,000). While AS did see its total oversales increase in 2009, it was not a dramatic increase. So, the problem is clearly not that AS is overbooking too much on a systemic basis. What increased drastically for AS was the percentage of total denied boardings that were involuntary. 25% of all denied boardings were involuntary!! In comparison, Air Tran had about 75% greater rate of total oversales than AS, but a drastically lower rate of IDBs. On Air Tran, only about 1.6% of denied boardings were involuntary. So, it would appear that AS does not so much need to reduce overbooking, but increase the incentives it is offering to customers.

Of course, many of the IDBs could be happening on certain routes and or times of the day/days of the week, so obviously a more thorough analysis is required. I wonder if certain leisure routes, like Vegas or Hawaii are most impacted, especially with the winter-time weight restrictions on the HA flights (tho it seemed like they normally chose the fuel stop option).