Twenty years of service quality performance in the US airline industry

The Air Travel Consumer Report (ATCR) was first published in 1987 as a means of making information about US airline performance available to the flying public. It has since been used by several airlines to tout their service quality performance and by two groups of researchers to assess the individual and industry-level performance of US carriers. This paper uses data from the ATCR to examine airline quality performance on such key indicators as on-time arrival, customer complaints, denied boarding and mishandled baggage to determine the trend in airline service performance over the past two decades. The data show that during periods of retrenchment when airlines are reducing flight schedules due to economic downturns, the level of on-time arrival tends to improve while customer complaints, denied boardings and mishandled baggage decline. Part of the explanation for the changes is the lack of airport and air traffic capacity to handle periods of higher traffic volume.