Surprise! Study Shows That Price Is NOT King When Flying to Europe Or Asia. It Still Matters, But Customer Service Matters More

Despite what you’ve heard for 40 years now, since the dawn of economic deregulation of airline service, U.S. air travelers are NOT single mindedly and maniacally focused on getting cheap fares.

Well, at least not when they travel across an ocean.

The Airline International Destination Satisfaction Study, out this week from the well-regarded customer satisfaction research firm J.D. Power, found that four broad customer satisfaction evaluation categories all play a bigger role than getting a lower ticket price when travelers are deciding which airlines to fly on to Europe and/or Asia.

That’s a huge surprise given the long-held belief – indeed, the well-documented history showing – that a large majority of U.S. air travelers, especially leisure travelers and entrepreneurs operating on shoestring budgets, are intently focused on getting the lowest fare possible. But that surprise is muted by J.D. Power’s further analysis that price falls to No. 5 only when talking about trans-oceanic flights to Asia and Europe. Price, indeed, remains king for most travelers when it comes to selecting a domestic flight, even a long coast-to-coast domestic flight.

Michael Taylor, head of J.D. Power’s Travel Intelligence research unit says, “A low fare may be the best way to attract a first-time international passenger but retaining passengers on routes to Europe and Asia is all about delighting customers with great in-flight experiences.”

And the best carriers at doing that, according to the new study, are Turkish Airlines on routes to Europe, and Japan Airlines on routes to Asia. JAL scored 869 on a scale of 1,000 used by J.D. Power to rank passengers’ satisfaction with the 11 airlines providing trans-Pacific service and the 11 that fly trans-Pacific routes. JAL was the only trans-Pacific carrier to earn five “gold balls” in J.D. Power’s “Circle Ratings” score card. Turkish Airlines, which scored 833 on that 1,000 point scale, was joined by Virgin Atlantic with a score of 829 as the only two trans-Atlantic carriers that earned five gold balls.

Delta Airlines was the highest performing U.S.-based carrier in both the Atlantic and Pacific categories, finishing second with a score of 861 for its service to Asia and fourth with a score of 815 for its service to Europe.

Both American and United, the two other U.S.-based carriers included in the rankings, earned below average scores for their service to Asia. The average score among the 12 trans-Pacific operators was 830. American ranked 8^th with a score of 816. United ranked 11^th, last, with a score of 808. On trans-Atlantic routes American earned a slightly above-average score of 812 while United scored 809, which also was the group’s average score.

Unlike domestic travelers, international air passengers are more focused on the in-flight passenger experience than the price of their seats. That makes sense, given the longer periods of time spent aloft when flying internationally. And food and drink quality play a particularly important role, according to the new study.

“One of the most powerful ways” to give travelers a “great” in-flight experience, Taylor says, is “to do that with food and beverage offerings that are unique to the airline’s culture and that manage to deliver flavor at altitude, where it has been proven that taste buds grow less sensitive.”

Indeed, it’s particularly hard to deliver tasty meals in flight – and especially at altitudes 35,000 feet and above where international flights typically operate. The higher a plane flies, the more dry the air inside it becomes. Though airliner cabins are pressurized to make it feel to passengers as if they’re only 5,000 to 10,000 feet up, there’s still a lot less moisture in an airplane cabin than on the ground. And since flavors primarily are transferred from foods to people via the moisture and juices contained in those foods, the dry conditions in flight make transferring flavors a challenge that aircraft designers, food engineers and chefs have not overcome – and may not ever fully overcome.

Additionally, airplanes do not have the ability to prepare hundreds or even just dozens of meals from scratch in flight. Instead, airline meals are cooked long before a plane’s takeoff and, in the case of international flights, many, many hours before the last round of meals are served prior to landing. They are cooked in giant airport kitchens, carefully packed and stored on board planes to keep items warm and free from contamination, and then warmed up again on board before serving.  That’s not even close to an ideal way of preparing and serving great food, but it’s that’s the set of limitations that airlines have to work around.

All that explains why, even on airlines that score relatively well for their in-flight food service, passengers’ satisfaction with airline food service remains significantly lower than their level of satisfaction with carriers’ in-flight entertainment offerings.

But some carriers clearly do a more pleasing job of it than others. Turkish, British Airways, JAL and several other Asian carriers all have earned – and maintained over long periods – good reputations for in-flight food.

But food is not the only customer service category that tops low prices when it comes to travelers selecting an airline for a flight to Europe or Asia. In fact, travelers’ previous experience – good or bad -with individual carriers ranks as the single most important factor in consumers’ international airline choice. In short, airlines can win the long-term loyalty and preference of passengers by providing them a very good travel experience, but also risk losing them entirely, or at least for some period of time in the future, by delivering poor in-flight service on a few flights, or even on just one flight.

Following past experience with individual carriers, the factors that weigh most, in order, on travelers’ choice of an international carrier are:

• Good customer service – this is something of a catch-all category that includes attentiveness of flight crew, seating comfort, food and beverage, storage space and more
• Convenient scheduling – while business travelers long have placed a high priority on scheduled flight times, leisure travelers who by nature are under less pressure to be someplace at a particular time, nevertheless remain somewhat sensitive to time when it comes to planning their vacation or other non-business activities as well as to how convenient a flight’s departure time is
• The carrier’s reputation – international travelers need not have flown a particular carrier in the past to be positively or negatively disposed toward it, or to even have a “meh” attitude toward it. Word of mouth advertising remains very effective both for spreading the good word about a carrier’s service or for trashing a carrier for its poor service
• Ticket price – continues to play an important role in carrier selection on international routes. But the reality is that most international airlines typically match or closely mirror the prices charged by competitors on the same routes (unless particular flights are so popular that they are always nearly full, giving the airline the ability to charge higher prices for the few remaining seats). So price competition on many international routes is not as intense as on many domestic routes. That said, the slow but steady growth of international discount carriers like Norwegian Airlines slowly is bringing tough domestic market-like price competition to at least some international routes, particularly those between North America and Europe.