Twitter Comments Show US Airlines Struggled to Please Passengers This Summer

InsureMyTrip.com conducted a research and analyzed more than 25,000 airline-related Twitter comments this summer. InsureMyTrip is a website that allows passengers to compare the price and policy of different travel insurance packages. In their study, InsureMyTrip analyzed tweets about ten US airlines posted between July 19 and August 2. The website then compared the results to tweets during the same period in 2019. With a unique “sentiment analysis tool”, the researchers determined which of the 10 airlines received the most positive and negative Twitter comments.

Airlines Had Fewer Positive Twitter Comments This Summer

10 US airlines lost an average 20.1% rating off their “positive Twitter comments” score compared to 2019.  However, it is worth mentioning that the 10 US airlines slightly improved their “negative Twitter comments” score.

Alaska Airlines had the highest score in terms of positive Tweets. Alaska received a score of 43.8% in their “positive Twitter comments” score while Hawaiian had the lowest number of negative tweets at 34.2%.

Of the 10 US airlines, Spirit Airlines had the worst performance in terms of positive tweets. It had a “positive Twitter comments” score of just 21%.

Southwest’s Service Quality Problems

Researchers discovered that Southwest’s passenger satisfaction declined significantly this year. Southwest only had 32% positive tweets during the study period. On the other hand, the airline had 45.1% negative tweets. In 2019, 69.9% were positive tweets and only 30.1% were negative.

Several factors contributed to these numbers. For instance, the airline struggled to meet the current travel demand. This led to flight delays and cancellations. And with inadequate staff, its flight attendants and pilots complained about being overworked. In response to these complaints, Southwest decided to scale back on its scheduled flights.

Ronni Kenoian, the director of marketing of InsureMyTrip, said that “cancellations” was the most common term used on negative tweets this summer.

The Department of Transportation is also tracking airline passenger satisfaction. However, the problem with the DOT’s method is that they don’t have a mechanism to track positive sentiments from passengers. Also, the DOT stats don’t account for the tendency of passengers to only file complaints.