How do UK airlines score on customer satisfaction?

How do UK airlines score on customer satisfaction? The answer, new figures published today by the UK National Customer Satisfaction Index (NCSI) suggest, is they outperform their US counterparts but lag the national average for the UK.

NCSI-UK is a sister initiative of the American Customer Satisfaction Index developed by Professor Claes Fornell in conjunction with the University of Michigan - and airlines were one of the sectors it specifically covered in the first quarter of 2009.

"The airlines category debuts in NCSI with a score of 69, below the national average [for the UK of 73%], but substantially better than the US [airlines figure of 64]," the report says. "While higher fares contribute to lower passenger satisfaction, low service quality has an even greater impact. And while customer complaint frequency is less than the national average at only 6%, barely half the national average, airlines do one of the poorest jobs of any industry at handling the complaints they do receive - with the exception of Virgin, which seems to have excellent complaint handling."

You can read more about the NCSI first quarter study here