Passenger satisfaction studies in global aviation context: trends and best practices

The aviation industry is in constant crisis, with low margins, pandemics, and wars impacting operations. Airlines are competing fiercely to fill the planes with passengers and cargo. To attract passengers, to improve brand image, and make additional revenue, all aviation stakeholders need to measure the satisfaction of passengers regularly to meet and exceed the customer expectations. This thesis aims to research standard questionnaires and passenger surveys the industry uses to improve and develop new products and services. The purpose is to examine whether these satisfaction surveys cover topics that match what passengers deem important to overall satisfaction and whether survey results are segmented in a way that matches the travelling population, allowing for efficient use of data for business development. The air passenger journey has numerous touchpoints with different aviation stakeholders, and every actor in the touchpoint chain has their internal needs to measure and develop services. This study investigates aspects of satisfaction measurements and methods, and snapshots some of the industry recognized surveys currently conducted. Details of the surveys are then compared to findings from academic research showing the dimensions of the air travel journey that passengers find the most important to their overall satisfaction. Thus, a comparison and ranking of surveys is made based on their coverage of topics contributing to overall passenger satisfaction, which serves as a basis for further analysis. As the stakeholders have different business objectives, the surveys overlap in certain aspects of the journey, but are lacking in some parts. The results demonstrate the need to change currently conducted surveys to match the current traveling public, as well as to adjust survey questions to better address some touchpoints. Results of this study do not illustrate all possible survey scenarios; thus, several potential fields of research were identified