Tourism and Travel

Critic points out holes in airline ratings Earlier this week, you may have seen the 2005 Airline Quality Rating produced by Professors Brent Bowen of the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Dean Headley of Wichita State University. The AQR is an airline report card, scoring the performance of 16 air carriers for on-time performance, denied boardings, mishandled baggage and customer complaints. Based on a formula developed by the two professors and comparisons from previous years, the study determined that service got worse for three-quarters of the airlines watched. The 2005 report examined performance in 2004. Noteworthy to Las Vegans is that Southwest Airlines, the largest commercial carrier at McCarran International Airport, was third among the 16 airlines studied, maintaining its ranking from 2003 and 2002. America West Airlines, No. 2 at McCarran, was sixth in the ranking, down from fourth in 2003 and 2002.
	The rest of McCarran's top five: No. 3 United finished fourth in the study (up from ninth in 2003 and eighth in 2002), No. 4 Delta came in at 11th (up from 12th a year ago, but down from seventh in 2002) and No. 5 American was eighth (up from 11th last year, but down from sixth in 2002). The top airline performer, incidentally, was JetBlue Airways, a New York-based carrier with a small presence in Las Vegas -- six flights a day to two destinations, John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, and Long Beach, Calif. In May, the airline will add a new daily round trip to and from Boston. The researchers said overall, the AQR score was lower in 2004 than in 2003 with decreased industry performance in the four areas tracked. Bowen and Headley concluded that the airlines' personnel belt-tightening was to blame for the lower scores on the quality scales. The AQR conclusions are widely reported every year, but at least one aviation expert says the study isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Mike Boyd of the Evergreen, Colo.-based Boyd Group, said the study is flawed because it relies on unverifiable data from the Department of Transportation. In addition, Boyd said he has a hard time swallowing information filled with some fundamental mistakes, like the name of the top airline in the report. Boyd rightly points out that the carrier is JetBlue Airways -- not Airlines, as listed in the report. "The guys in academia really need to get out more before they start criticizing this industry," Boyd said.
He also was critical of the report reaching conclusions based on the unverified DOT data. Mishandled baggage and customer complaints are compiled by DOT, but are taken directly from the carriers "On his own Internet site, Boyd mocked the report's terminology." ... When it comes to indicating the depth of knowledge the authors apparently have regarding the airline industry, dig this (Associated Press) quote from one of the learned professors who compile this yearly statistical comic book, in regard to airline employee attitudes: " 'Morale's going to be down and they're not going to care if they get the bags to the loading dock in five minutes, 10 minutes or 15 minutes.' " 'Loading dock?' Now, there's a real tidbit of new airline-ese. "Hello, professor. Before you sally forth to critique the industry, it'd be nice to first learn what happens at an airport. Bags, professor, are taken to baggage make-up areas, if they're outbound. And if they're inbound, it's to the baggage claim area. Loading docks, learned one, are for trucks and freight." The AQR is well read because all people who have ever flown have their own stories about how an airline did them wrong. Seeing a report on the topic validates the feelings we have about airlines. But if Boyd is right -- and he and his staff have a great track record for being on top of the industry -- the annual AQR should be taken with a grain of salt. "There's nothing wrong with issuing studies on the airline industry," Boyd concluded. "But they'd better be supportable and based on hard, verifiable data sources. The random, unverified complaint system at the DOT does not meet that standard. In the past, the AQR, which gets lots of coverage from an unquestioning media, has not met that standard, either. Source: Richard N. Velotta / Staff Writer - http://www.inbusinesslasvegas.com/