"I can't get no satisfaction" is still the mantra of frequent flyers, but a majority said Continental Airlines outperformed the eight other major domestic carriers for long-haul (more than 500 miles) and short-haul flights last year.
The J.D. Power and Associates/Frequent Flyer magazine 2000 Domestic Airline Customer Satisfaction Study is based on evaluations from 6,079 travelers who each logged more than 25 domestic roundtrip flights in 1999. Respondents said the four most important satisfaction factors were on-time performance (25 percent), airport check-in (11 percent), flight attendant courtesy (11 percent), and seating comfort (11 percent).
Only Continental and second-place TWA garnered above-average scores in all areas. Slightly more than one in two respondents reported some type of problem with their flights, led by arrival delays that increased 29 percent to an average of 53 minutes from 1998.
Another finding: 25 percent of the respondents got travel information online, a 56 percent increase from 1998.