Bad news for event planners who coordinate programs that must incorporate airline travel: airline performance declined in 2006. This, according to the 17th annual national Airline Quality Rating, a report that ranks the largest U.S. airlines conducted by the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Wichita State University.
Key 2006 highlights include the following:
- On-time arrivals: 75.5%
- Mishandled baggage: 6.5 per 1,000 passengers
- Involuntary denied boardings: 1.01 per 10,000 passengers
- Consumer complaints: 0.88 per 100,000 passengers
If event planners organize conferences and programs that require airline transportation, they don’t want their guests experiencing flight delays, lost luggage or boarding denials. After all, the primary objective of such trips is to result in great experiences that build relationships -- not angry phone calls from attendees and hosting executives.
That said, the 2007 Airline Quality Rating details the performance of each airline in 2006. Based on the measuring criteria, the study ranks airlines as follows:
- Hawaiian
- Jet Blue
- Air Tran
- Frontier
- Northwest
- Southwest
- Continental
- United
- Alaska
- American
- ATA
- Delta
- US Air
- SkyWest
- Mesa
- COMAIR
- American Eagle
- Atlantic Southeast
The rating is conducted annually by the UNO Aviation Institute and W. Frank Barton School of Business at WSU. The AQR, as an industry standard, provides consumers and industry watchers a means to compare quality among airlines using objective performance-based data. It is a joint research project funded as part of faculty research activities at UNO and WSU.
