Airline Service Quality and Customer Experience
Summary
Airline service quality and customer experience encompass the full spectrum of interactions between passengers and carriers, from pre-flight booking to post-arrival feedback. Core dimensions of service quality—reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles—shape travellers’ perceptions and influence satisfaction, loyalty and willingness to recommend. Advances in digital channels and big-data analytics have enabled more nuanced assessment of passenger sentiment through online reviews, sentiment analysis and machine learning. Carriers now tailor offerings according to class segment, price sensitivity and individual preferences, integrating operational performance with emotional and value-based drivers. Globally, a robust customer experience strategy underpins revenue optimisation, competitive differentiation and sustainable growth, while addressing evolving expectations in safety, comfort and environmental responsibility.
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Airline Service Quality and Customer Experience publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in airline service quality and customer experience across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
SERVQUAL model: A service quality measurement tool evaluating five dimensions—reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles.
Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA): A statistical topic-modelling method that uncovers hidden thematic structures within large text corpora.
Price elasticity: A metric quantifying how sensitive customer demand is to changes in price, used to optimise revenue strategies.
Perceived value: A passenger’s overall assessment of benefits received relative to sacrifices made, influencing satisfaction and loyalty.
References
- An experimental study for identifying customer prominent viewpoints on different flight classes by topic modeling methods. International Journal of Information Management Data Insights (2024).
- Will they take this offer? A machine learning price elasticity model for predicting upselling acceptance of premium airline seating. Information & Management (2023).
- Navigating loyalty and trust in the skies: The mediating role of customer satisfaction and image for sustainable airlines. Sustainable Futures (2024).
About these summaries
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