adam1uk

From PA:

​​​​​​​Embargoed to 0001 Saturday December 16
BA AND RYANAIR AT BOTTOM OF AIRLINE SATISFACTION SURVEY
By Neil Lancefield, Press Association Transport Correspondent
British Airways has slumped to third from bottom in an annual survey of
short-haul airlines.
The carrier achieved a customer score of just 52% in research by consumer group
Which?, down from 67% in 2016.
In a year when BA ended free catering for economy passengers on short-haul
flights, the airline was given just two stars for its food and drink.
The same poor rating was given for seat comfort and value for money.
Ryanair came in joint last place with Vueling - owned by BA's parent company
IAG - with a customer score of 45%.
BA was also rated the third worst long-haul carrier, behind the likes of TUI
Airways and Thomas Cook for the first time.
Its customer score dropped from 60% in 2016 to 50%.
Some 75,000 BA passengers had their flights cancelled following an IT failure
during a bank holiday weekend in May.
United Airlines was ranked the worst long-haul airline (39%), followed by
American Airlines (46%).
Neither airline scored more than two stars for anything other than cabin
environment.
Which? travel editor Rory Boland said: "Passengers are telling us that there
are many different ways to be a great airline, but providing great service at an
acceptable price is a must have.
"BA's poor customer satisfaction shows it clearly needs to step up its game in
a year that has been beset with problems.
"From the food and drink on offer, to the poor value for money of the journey
itself, the airline has a lot of work to do to improve the experience that
passengers associate with the airline."
The research was based on responses from 11,625 passengers who had flown from
the UK.
Customer scores are a combination of overall satisfaction and the likelihood of
recommending the airline to a friend.
A BA spokesman said: "British Airways is a premium airline committed to
customer choice.
"We offer customers the biggest network from London's most central airports, a
loyalty programme with huge benefits and the best punctuality record of the
three big short-haul operators from the capital.
"We also give our growing numbers of customers a wide choice of fares and
services."
Top spot in the short-haul table went to Aurigny Air Services (80%), with the
Channel Islands carrier gaining four stars from passengers for its boarding
process, cabin environment and customer service.
Singapore Airlines (88%) was ranked number one for long-haul flights for the
second year running and received full marks in several categories.
ends

nallison

Oh dear. So BA fired some cabin crew for partying a bit too hard. Meanwhile, their reputation seems to be crashing on all available measures, they are making U-turns on many of their cost cutting measures (no doubt having burned substantial sums of money), and are being outperformed by their peers in revenue per km, revenue growth etc.

Now I ask, who did more damage to BA, those cabin crew, or the people who led them down this strategic path?

PETER01

I'm always a bit sceptical of these type of surveys. The reason I say that is according to the results this particular one on short haul the top airline was Aurigny Air Services despite only having I believe 11 aircraft which are very small and have a very limited network with the results as follows:

1. Aurigny Air Services
2. Jet2
3. Norwegian
4. Aer Lingus
5. Swiss
6. Air Malta
7. Lufthansa
8. KLM
9. SAS
10. Eurowings

If BA can sort out their priority boarding and bring back a free refreshment in ET I'm sure they will improve on these type of surveys. My own view is that my latter point there is what has infuriated many.

There are still many great benefits of flying and using BA and the BAEC is a very good FFP in my view. In the article the author states BA provide "poor value for the money for the journey itself". Really?! WT+ fares like just now to LAX for £748 from LHR and £550 from ARN are many examples I choose to fly with them, I'm not a TP runner, and the route network is excellent for choice.

BA are not perfect but I honestly don't recognise the airline I fly on versus the one which is portrayed on here at times by some who never actually fly them or haven't for a few years.

orbitmic

I agree methods are always worth scrutinising. However, to be honest, a collapse of customer satisfaction of 15% in one year for short haul and 10% for long haul is massive whichever way you look at it. In other words, whatever the flaws in the methodology they will be the same year on year and whist a decline of 1-2% can be 'noise', 15% is simply too enormous a figure not to be systematic.

In my view, it probably reflects on BA's loss of reputational capital at least as much as their loss of service quality per se, and both should be very worrying for management.

Jagboi

Just because they are small doesn't mean that Aurigny doesn't do what they do well. On the routes they do fly, they obviously have happy passengers.

Worcester

Also it's not that people stop flying BA, it's more their willingness to pay a premium to fly BA. I believe the Investor day numbers showed this.

V10

I have to say that you're looking at this from a particular viewpoint which is fine, but priority boarding or the FFP really won't register for many occasional and infrequent travellers. We could also cherry pick full fares rather than sales offers to illustrate an entirely different value for money proposition.

11k travellers is a decent sample size for any survey, and any serious airline would be foolish to write off the messages contained within.

Juliet68

IAN-UK

The ranking you refer to is (largely) irrelevant, as is Aurigny's position relative to British Airways. What is significant is the dramatic year-on-year decline in BA's reputation among consumers.

It was a relatively large survey conducted by a competent organisation. I'm assuming consistency in the way data are collected and analysed, meaning that the YOY falls in British Airway's consumer satisfaction is not some trivial manifestation of a quirky survey.

I really don't see priority boarding having much impact on the majority of BA's passengers. The survey wasn't aimed at the higher echelons of BAEC. On the other hand, I'm sure you are right about the cack-handed way refreshments are handled in short-haul economy has got a lot of backs up. SWISS had to pedal backwards on this and it looks as though BA will have to.

Something a red herring. The survey doesn't address FFP. The passengers surveyed are unhappy with the airline and the service it offers. If the survey had targetted the limited subset of BAEC members the results would have been different. But it didn't.

The low fares you quote may well reflect the current levels of demand for BA services, which is itself mirrors customer satisfaction. A situation you are able to take advantage of, but one that should worry longer term investors in IAG.

Squandering consumer confidence is easy; it's less easy to claw back confidence and reputation.

headingwest

Well whether this survey is accurate or not, frankly what matters to me is my own personal customer satisfaction survey where currently BA comes bottom. That's the only survey that is important to me!

Worcester

I wonder what the opinion of BA will be after the move to increas density in the cabins, & new slimline seats which I have heard are not great. Oh yes and only one loo at the back of the aircraft.

Smid

It really baffles me why Jet2 seem to feature so highly in such polls. It's basically Ryanair without the cheap prices, a low service airline which doesn't blink at a 200 quid one way if it a popular route. It's "FF programme" was crap last time I looked at it, and suffers same outstation queues of passengers trying to check in.

Only thing which Jet2 does which is better than BA is that its BoB does offers such as 3 vodkas for a tenner, or 2 little bottle of wine for 8 quid. Something which BA seems to become blind to, that you need to entice some people to Buy on board.

simons1

I'm not sure what a fall in BA's customer service measure from 67% to 52% has got to do with Aurigny?

As for the last paragraph, well each to their view. It is after all FT and even though BA seems to be steadily sliding down most league tables there will always be those who argue that things are going swimmingly.

I doubt priority boarding will have much impact but the U turn on free tea and coffee (if true) might.

rossmacd

I would be assuming that it is linked to people's perceptions versus expectations. The expectation of Jet2 is that it is cheap, low service and an economical way of travelling. When on board, passenger's expectations are met, giving a decent perception.

In terms of BA, they do themselves no favours by continually referring to themselves as a "premium" airline (merely the fact that they have to outwardly say this is concerning to say the least). It is quite clear that people's perceptions do not add up to this expectation (higher fares, poor onboard SH service and recent operational disasters), therefore BA slides down the scale.

corporate-wage-slave

Jet2 I can totally understand, and in a way it shows how it's not so much about aspects such as BoB itself, as the way it is done. Jet2 does the complete opposite to BA in terms of staffing - it minimises, almost to a laughable extent, the use of ground agents and other outsourcing arrangements. Almost everyone you see connected with a Jet2 trip works entirely for Jet2 and often has many years of service with the airline. Every staff member is utterly plugged into Jet2's ethos of "friendly low fares", down to their round "can I help you?" badges worn even by some of their pilots. So they never went in for confrontation approaches on cabin baggage or not accepting cash for BoB, instead they use their staff and check-in agents as virtual travel agents to get further bookings out of their passengers. On board the crew are very active in getting passengers settled and their bags sorted out - they have less cabin space than BA aircraft The loyalty they engender from their generally more elderly, lower middle class clientele is quite remarkable and perhaps understated in this survey (this demographic is notoriously hard to pick up). Now, they are still very much a LCC, turn up at check-in without having done OLCI 5 hours before departure, they will charge you £17.50 to print your boarding pass. Having said that, at least for the EuroTraveller concept BA could learn a lot from Jet2.

Aurigny: that's more straightforward, given their main customer base is the island of Guernsey, population 63,000. They have a well established set of customers who avidly write in to Which? and similar travel surveys. If you fly Aurigny the cabin crew may well ask you to participate in the surveys and it also features on their emails. Personally it's difficult for me to see them as giving a comfortable (ATRs? Dorniers?) or even cost effective service compared to BA but it does show what having a band of well organised loyalists can do for an airline.