A Study on Passenger Satisfaction Levels towards Service Rendered

Abstract

These extremes coexist because airlines have historically focused on safety, aircraft technology, speed, geographic reach, and in-flight service attributes; on distinctive regulatory constraints and labor issues; and on the unpredictability imposed by weather and rapidly shifting demand. At the same time, issues such as route structures, excess capacity, pricing, and yield management compete with operations for the airlines’ attention. As a result, the airlines haven’t given their operations factory like, industrial-engineering scrutiny. Great operators in other heavy industries have worked through these challenges to deliver low costs, high quality, and satisfied customers. Yet up to 45 percent of an airline’s cost structure consists of maintenance, ground handling, in- flight services, call centers, and aircraft acquisitions (which are influenced by operational variables like aircraft downtime). One hundred years after the first powered flight, it’s time to start looking at the airlines as mature industrial companies and to apply proven manufacturing practices that can streamline their process-intensive activities. At stake is an opportunity to reduce overall costs dramatically by using labor, materials, and assets more efficiently, to enhance the reliability of service, and to strengthen flight safety. The lean approaches of pioneering airlines have begun with the maintenance shop, which functions very much as a disassembly-assembly factory and displays a striking degree of waste and variability. Impressive maintenance results—30 to 50 percent improvements in aircraft and component turnaround times and 25 to 50 percent improvements in productivity are encouraging signs for the airlines’ other operational choke points, such as baggage handling, passenger loading, and customer service. Applying the philosophy and methods of the lean approach also creates new opportunities for outsourcing and in sourcing. In spite of the strong cost-cutting efforts of the airlines, they still harbor large amounts of what lean practitioners define as waste: anything that doesn’t add value for end customers. Waste starts with the utilization of aircraft and other kinds of infrastructure, which often falls below 50 percent.