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Passenger attitudes to Airline service quality and expectations
Conference Paper · March 2020
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Asiri Prabhath Senasinghe
The University of Calgary
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Anuja Fernando
University of Moratuwa
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2. Passenger attitudes to Airline service quality and expectations
Asiri Senasinghea
,Anuja Fernandob
and Dhanusha Kodagodac
a
Graduate Student, University of Calgary, Canada; Email: apsenasinghe@gmail.com
b
Lecturer, Faculty of Engineering, University of Moratuwa. Email: anujas@uom.lk
c
Graduate, Department of Transport and Logistics Management, University of Moratuwa.
Email: kodagoda.dhanu@gmail.com
Abstract: Understanding customer satisfaction with and expectations of an airline is vital for any
airline’s continued growth and survival in a highly competitive environment. Passenger experience
of an airline rests on numerous factors ranging from inland amenities, and schedules to cabin crew
and inflight facilities. On the other hand, airline service quality is mainly considered according to
three aspects: airline operations and amenities, aircraft quality, and cabin crew. This paper is a
result of an online survey which conducted with 157 participants, 75% of whom who have had
experience with more than two airlines, to examine how passenger perception on airline service
quality changes with demographic factors such as nationality, age, gender, and level of income.
Moreover, 50% of the sample happened to be Sri Lankan passengers.
According to the statistics, about 95% of participants believed that on-time arrivals and departures
and safety when flying are more important than inland or inflight amenities provided by an airline.
Only 25% stated that inflight entertainment facilities are very-important to them. Interestingly,
gender had a significant impact (pvalue< 0.05) on attitudes to inflight-entertainment facilities, where
females show more interest than the male passengers. Behaviour and knowledge of the cabin crew
seems to have a great impact on passengers as well, where about 95% participants stated that the
behaviour of the cabin crew gave them more confidence in flying with such airlines and, also noted
that the cabin crew should have enough knowledge to answer their questions.
Age, gender, level of income and nationality did not show any significant impact on attitudes to
inflight food and beverages, or the age of the cabin crew, or aircraft quality such as comfortable
interior and seats.However, the attitudes to the response time by the cabin crew showed a
significant (Pvalue< 0.05) difference according to nationality, where Sri Lankan travelers place
more importance a quick response time from the cabin crew than other nationalities. Interestingly,
level of income showed a significant impact (pvalue< 0.05) on the attitudes to consistent courtesy
showed during the flight by the cabin crew, where lower-income (≤ 2,500 USD per month)
passengers were more concerned about continuous attention while higher income passengers (>
2,500 USD per month) stated continuous courtesy was not much important. Further, neat and tidy
appearance of the cabin crew was not found to be significant with any tested demographic group.
Only about 34% of participants stated that they selected the airline by themselves and others noted
that the selection was done by a family member (11.5%), or a company/travel agent or a
representative (54.5%). The mean values and standard deviations of the overall scores were not
found to be significant (pvalue< 0.05) with age, gender, level-of-income or nationality.
In this study participants were asked to rank seven characteristics starting from one to seven
according their expectations. According to these rankings, assurance of safety, reliability of flights
(on-time arrivals and departures) and the ground facilities noted as the top three key aspects
expected from an airline. However, there were significant differences (Pvalue< 0.05) to be found

3. when ranking second and third characteristics, according to the nationality and level of income,
where Sri Lankan passengers were more concerned about employees and amenities, while other
nationality travelers stressed on responsiveness (prompt handling of requests and complains) and
customization (individual attention). Further, passengers with higher income levels nominated
flight patterns as their third expected feature from an airline over ground facilities.
All in all, airline operations and amenities, and cabin crew had a great impact on the image of the
airline. Air passenger level of satisfaction was found to be hinged mainly on gender, nationality
and level of income. Finally, safety, reliability and ground facilities were found to be the top three
expectations from the air passenger’s perspective.
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