The U.S. airport industry’s passenger sentiment score dropped 1.6% as airports, airport vendors, and airlines continued to struggle with hiring and training new employees.
July 22, 2022 @ 10am EDT
During the past 7 calendar days, the U.S. airport industry’s overall sentiment score dropped 1.6% to 7.99 from 8.12. The drop in passenger sentiment coincides with operational challenges faced by most major airlines. Difficulties with hiring new staff and the time required to train employees is causing a strain on resources across the industry. Airlines, airports, and airport vendors alike are facing similar challenges when it comes to providing a high level of customer service. However, no matter what goes wrong during the passenger journey, and regardless of the cause, the airport tends to always get the blame.
GlidePathCX continues to engage millions of airport passengers each week by reaching passengers on their mobile and laptop devices while they are in the airport. The majority of these electronic communications contained a Passenger Experience Survey, with overall sentiment measured on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best).
GlidePathCX’s Sentiment Score was calculated for each airport on a near real-time basis via the company’s proprietary Insight360SM dashboard. The resulting data was then aggregated to calculate a sentiment score for the U.S. airport industry as a whole.
For the week ending July 22nd, the percentage of business traveler respondents was 18.2% vs. 81.8% for leisure travelers.
The Chairman of London’s Heathrow Airport, Lord Paul Deighton, blames the airlines for the myriad problems that travelers are experiencing. Ground handlers are underpaid, stated Lord Deighton in the U.K.’s Telegraph: “Ground handling is a highly competitive, labour intensive, low margin business, characterised by short term contracts. Airlines have driven down costs over the years, and this was one of the first costs they slashed during the pandemic.”
GlidePathCX will continue to closely monitor airport passenger sentiment and related insights and trends.
