flyinbob

Sad story here.

I guess if you get the #1 on time ranking by kicking tardy customers in the nuts it comes back to bite you on the backside.

unavaca

Perhaps with a press release that says "Woohoo, we beat Delta!"

CCIE_Flyer

By putting a bunch of spaces or tabs between the one and the three?

We're Number 1 3
In customer service!!

Edit: So all of my spaces were nixed - bummer.

PanHam

With Mesa's number 12 ranking, UA can print up some napkins with "Lucky Number 13: Only slightly worse than an airline in Chapter 11."

adambrau

My sense is that the improvements in United ops many folks began reporting in the latter half of 2009 are not reflected in this survey. I think the consensus is that if you're an elite on United you get great treatment, but the closer you are to general member status the worse off you are.

UA was 1st in on-time arrivals of the 5 biggest legacy carriers. Not sure how well they compared with the 3 other factors in this survey : mishandled baggage, customer complaints and denied boardings.

I guess they will just ignore the survey. I have a hard time believing that Airtran and Southwest are 'better' airlines than United, though I realize a big part of it is subjective.

notquiteaff

(from thread subject line)

It will be printed on the toilet paper in the lavs.

Mike Jacoubowsky

Uh-oh, here we go again...

Doing well in customer service is at least partly, and likely mostly, about managing and meeting expectations. UA tends to advertise what it doesn't deliver (with the new exception of being #1 for on-time departures). Southwest, on the other hand, is masterful at meeting the expectations they create. Perhaps the most-masterful part is recognizing their strengths and advertising those, rather than pretending to be something they aren't.

So UA could objectively deliver better customer service than Southwest or Mesa or whomever, but this is one area where subjectively-derived feelings are more important.

Corylopsis

1KVoice usually does a good job in responding my emails and concerns. However, I was called Ms. twice in email and paper mail when I was working with the complaint of my girlfriend's mechanical delays recently. Well, I didn't file another complaint for the Mr./Mrs. mistake.

bsb21

I honestly don't think AirTran is better than UA!

AirTran has OK crews, but I have seen some pretty nasty gate agents.

nycua1k

True about GMs. Though, I think the jury is still out on elites. I have seen UA bending over backwards for full price customers who are just GMs and not elites.

EIPremier

It is actual not a ranking of customer service at all. This so-called "airline quality report" merely takes data reported monthly to the department of transportation, plugs it into a completely arbitrary formula and spits out the numbers. The authors then attempt to make completely unsubstantiated conclusions from the data, such as "all regional airlines suck." OK, those weren't the exact words, but you get the point. The whole report basically serves a publicity grab for these two professors who seem to lack a 9th grade understanding of mathematics.

The way an airline scores well in this report is by having essentially no denied boardings and very low rates of mishandled baggage. The impact of on-time performance is almost negligible, because the authors of the report apparently never took Statistics 101 and don't understand that all the inputs need to be between 0 and 1 in order for the statistical weights to have any validity.

fastair

Now how was "customer service" defined? Was it a survey on how customers ranked their airlines services, or was it a few guys in colleges inventing their own mathematical formula and just inputing data from various published tables, then publishing.

Nowhere in the list of variables used, I believe is customers voting on the best or worst ervice. They used FoT stats for on time, DB's, DoT complaints and baggage. Weight whatever way they want to come up with a ranking of something, but not of customer service. One could change the weighting of just one of the variables in their own invented formula and come up with a completely different list. One could add price, route structure, loyalty programs, surveys from actual passengers, and come up with a 3rd list.

To post a thread here stating anyone is #1 or #13 is completely useless. If measuring on time, an industry norm is used. To measure IDB's an industry norm is used. To measure "customer service" a formula that only measures a few variables, none of which is defined as "customer service" and leaving out many other variables, then a weighting system that is neither mentioned, or even necessarily relevant...well, keep on quoting studies like this...they mean so much.

Mike Jacoubowsky

That's a bit over-the-top. Price, route structure, loyalty programs... that might define the reasons someone flies UA, but that does not define the inconveniences that aggravate people. Denied boardings, luggage issues, DOT complaints... those are all legit items that cause people to negatively reflect upon an airline. Further, since those items have been used in the past, United (or anyone else) can identify and work to improve them. This isn't something new suddenly sprung on United. It's old stuff, metrics that have been used for years to define "customer service."

The fact that it's not the way you would like to see it defined is not all that relevant. It's what the public sees, and that means it has an impact on how United's operations are seen. You might be able to construct something better. I'm sure you could. But that's not the world we live in.

A cynical person might think that UA's big focus on #1 on-time performance was because this was something that could be used to deflect attention away from what they knew to be coming down the 'pike. If it was my business, that's what I would have done. But I also would have looked at those other metrics and figured out how to make my operation look better.

gijoe24jp

I wonder what kind of excuses UA apologists will have this time?

harryhv

One encounter with the stinking ICC, and you will be asking how UA finished so high in the rankings