Highly critical YouGov report shows collapsing British Airways customer perceptions

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• Nicky says:

  8 Dec8 December 05:20

  Interesting article. I am flying long haul today, departing from a regional airport in CE and then connecting in Heathrow to fly business. My only other flight this year was on KLM over to Amsterdam and I have to admit to being impressed; their service was akin to what BA used to be a few years ago. Today I will be able to compare the journey to my last long haul on BA and judge for myself whether the standards are slipping as badly as I perceive from hfp readers, media reports and other travel sites.

• JK says:

  8 Dec8 December 05:21

  Ouch! At most large companies this would be extremely troubling and minds would be sharply focused…

  • Fenny says:

    8 Dec8 December 22:09

    Uber had their licence suspended in Sheffield yesterday. Let’s see how fast they recover from that.

• martin says:

  8 Dec8 December 05:48

  Interesting to see what quadrant Ryanair are in. Is that just improved relative to BA, or are they actually objectively seen as less bad than they used to be?

  • Simon says:

    8 Dec8 December 06:03

    They are objectively seen as better.

    But let me give some caution around the figures. I am on the yougov panel and have answered this sort of question for loads of brands. I answer the airline ones based purely on perception which for me is largely informed by here, flyertalk and the media – plus the occasional flight and weight of experience. So for example Monarch in my mind started with a low score because they were terrible twice 20 years ago. I have a soft spot for Delta because of the way they treated me as an unaccompanied child on multiple occasions (plus recent crews have been lovely to my kids).

    My point is that this isn’t scientific and the small moves in the middle of the graph are going to be noise. So if Ryanair are better it’s because people have read nice things about them in the papers, etc. A move the size of BA’s however is as Rob says significant. And proceeded by a very gentle ongoing decline over many years which in hindsight was a canary for them.

    • Olly says:

      9 Dec9 December 18:54

      Has Ryanair ever had anything nice said about it in the press?

  • Luke says:

    8 Dec8 December 06:06

    I guess it suggests, that ryanair continuously deliver about the same level of service (not better or worse, I believe this is going to change slightly after recent new and very incovenient hold luggage policy), meanwhile BA product in general gradually deteriorate (and cutting legroom on short haul aircraft possibly make it even worse).

    • Julian says:

      8 Dec8 December 12:14

      Ryanair has been consistently appalling with unfair extra ripoff charges at every turn since they started. And their check in agents are the most rude and nasty part of their setup of all. But they start at such a low base they can only get worse if they stop offering some cheap fares on some dates, which they do still frequently do, unlike Easyjet who pretend to offer cheap fares but actually almost never do.

      Re BA short haul the difference was clearl the free meal and drink, the hold bag and the better legroom than Easyjet and Ryanair. When all of those go completely (as yet a free hold bag has not been removed for Avios redemptions but I am sure it is coming, when the contract is renegotiated, with the excuse that they have been able to lower the Avios required for each destination for hand luggage only customers) then the only point in travelling with BA will be that only it offers flights out of Heathrow or London City. But if travelling from Gatwick there seems to be no advantage to travelling with BA at all now.

      Certainly when I finally make a trip to Australia and NZ I have no ambition at all to travel with BA both due to the absurdly uncompetitive fares to these destinations (especially in Economy) and due to the far worse service levels than the likes of Emirates, Ethiad or Qatar etc.

  • Jonathan says:

    8 Dec8 December 11:01

    I think the quadrant charts could be misleading. I don’t think it’s saying that Ryanair is objectively better than BA. I think the correct interpretation is that Ryanair’s score has improved slightly whereas BA’s has gone down, also that Emirates has stayed the same.

    For example (my made up numbers), if last year Emirates scored 99%, Ryanair scored 45% and BA scored 89% then the new scores this year would be 99%, ~47% and 77% respectively. In this example, BA would still be objectively better than Ryanair – still BA falling more than its competitors should hopefully be a wake up call.

    It’s a shame that the report didn’t include any absolute scores as I think that would have been helpful.

    • Sussex Bantam says:

      8 Dec8 December 15:42

      Your interpretation is correct. The quadrant chart doesn’t say “who is perceived to be best” it says “who has changed most”.

      So all the other carriers have had virtually no change in their customer perceptions (except United – which is probably to do with passengers getting dragged forcibly off their planes)

      BA on the other hand have a massive reduction in both perceived value and perceived quality. Different organisations give different weight to these type of surveys but I know in several brand focussed companies I have worked for this would be a crisis of monumental proportions. My guess is that BA doesn’t truly see itself as a brand focussed company.

• Marc says:

  8 Dec8 December 06:11

  Let me guess… expectations vs reality = customers perception/satisfaction

• Paul says:

  8 Dec8 December 06:38

  “””The drop among BA customers’ perception in this area started in autumn 2016, shortly after the introduction of inflight food and drink charges for short-haul flights. But the general public’s view began to change notably in May 2017, at the time of the brand’s much-publicised IT problem.””””

  The report surprises me in that people only changed their view a year ago.

  I haven’t paid to fly BA premium long haul since 2014 chusing QR and CX going East and AA going west. ( I appreciate BA gets some of this money due to their entirely legal commercial agreements on revenue sharing)

  What I resent is BAs dominance and my lack of real choice. I live close to LHR and at least 90 mins from LTN STN LGW. So if I wish to benefit from a FFP I must fly BA shorthaul and Oneworld long haul. The latter is not a chore but I really now dread shortfall on BA. I try to avoid Club Europe which is beyond poor while the absence of service of any kind, backed by the constant unannounced seats changes in Euro traveler, makes it hard work. ( first world problem I know)
  Outside of Europe shorthaul flying is so much better demonstrating that is is possible.

  I don’t therefore see things change much for BA and in any event the apparent public perception is not reflected in the share price which is the only measure Cruz and co really care about

  • Fenny says:

    8 Dec8 December 22:15

    I don’t live anywhere near LHR and even further from LGW, so BA have no advantage over any other airline flying from London for me. My opinion of BA went down when they switched from Airmiles to Avios and hasn’t improved much since. Having taken an EasyJet short haul flight from LGW this year, I wouldn’t feel any particular urge to go back to BA for flights in Europe, other than to use up my stash of Avios on RFS.

• Richard says:

  8 Dec8 December 06:41

  Being a premium price without a premium service has to catch up with you eventually.

  • Julian says:

    8 Dec8 December 12:20

    Offering a consistently appalling service, especially re cheating customers over hand luggage weight limits etc and demanding cash payments for overweight luggage to prevent card chargebacks, still so far does not seem to have caught up with Ryanair.

    But I suppose the point is that they targeted a new group of low income customers with minimal expectations, other than low nominal headline price (with a billion and one hidden extras), so that is presumably how they continue to get away with still getting repeat business from this customer group.

    Also they still fly to quite a few places that nobody else flies to and this is the other reason that some customers still put up with them in spite of everything else.

    • mark2 says:

      8 Dec8 December 14:55

      ??

    • Crafty says:

      8 Dec8 December 17:15

      I bet you a Ryanair plane that they don’t only, or even mainly, have “low income” customers.

      The Aldi phenomenon seems to have passed you by entirely.

• LostAntipod says:

  8 Dec8 December 11:06

  Not sure i would quote Uber but my first AirBnB experience went south and the recovery actions they immediately took really impressed me. I could have had nowhere to stay in another country instead i ended up in a better apartment at the same price, and some money back. Imagine if BA irrops was like that.

• JamesB says:

  8 Dec8 December 13:15

  I suspect the results are very skewed by infrequent flyers with little experience of flying multiple airlines. Were the survey repeated with only responses from people who fly 20+ sectors per year on 5+ carriers then I suspect results would look a whole lot worse even than this for BA.

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