I once told Obiero it will hit 5/- can't recall post #.....Its coming.

kunyolewa nayo.. 6.40! kweli leo kumenuka

New figures show airlines’ profits are up, but two of the American airlines with huge profits also have terrible customer service satisfaction.

The two most profitable airlines — American Airlines and United Airlines — have abysmal customer service satisfaction scores, as you can see from the chart.

That may seem counterintuitive, and it’s important to note some exceptions to this rule. But a side-by-side examination of the latest American Customer Service Index (ACSI) and the earnings of the major airlines, as measured by net income and operating margin, point to some noteworthy patterns.

“Passengers often assume that improving airline customer satisfaction and financial performance go hand in hand,” says Kendall Creighton, a spokeswoman for FlyersRights.org, an organization that advocates for air travelers. “They assume that satisfied customers are good for business.”

But in many cases, she notes, an airline’s customer satisfaction levels appear to be inversely related to profits. The higher the profits, the worse the scores. The more modest the profits, the higher the customer satisfaction.

“The highest rated airline, JetBlue, with a customer service score of 81, had an operating margin of 9 percent,” says Kevin Mitchell, whose Business Travel Coalition advocates for corporate travelers. “The lowest rated, Spirit, with a score of 54, had an operating margin of 19 percent.”

Of course, there are notable exceptions. Airlines like Alaska, Delta and Southwest have managed to strike a balance between profits and happy passengers. “The key for customers is what the airline does with the profits,” says Seth Kaplan, editor of Airline Weekly. “Delta has gotten itself into a virtuous cycle of earning good profits, some of which is reinvested into its product and into technology that has enabled it to run a very reliable airline with very impressive on-time stats and very few lost bags,” he says. “Customers have rewarded it by – Delta says, and this seems to be true – being willing to pay a bit more to fly Delta than to fly its less reliable competitors.”