VAMOSKIES: The AQR Riddle…

VamoSkies: Upper Level Turbulence (Premise).

How’s it going? Feeling better now? Feeling .016 better, is the going greater now that Embry-Riddle has released its 2018 Airline Quality Ratings for 2017? At least that is what E-R Aeronautical University’s Brett Bowen and Wichita State’s Dean Headley would have us travelers believe, what with their 28th annual report on major airline performance data.

AQR’s introductory abstract reminds that it is the industry standard, the longest regularly published rating available for airline quality of service. Adding that prior to 1991, there was no consistent monitoring of timely, objective (not subjective), and comparable service (carrier by carrier). Drawing from public data reported in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Air Travel Consumer Reports, AQR authors describe how they analyze multiple performance criteria, month by month, year by year, generating multi-factor weighted (+/-) averages across select airlines and time periods. 

Their focused comparison methodology addresses 15 performance elements in 4 major areas deemed relevant to travel consumers, namely on-time arrivals/departures, involuntary denied boardings, mishandled baggage and 12 categories of consumer complaints. AQR notes it then boils  all multi-weighted criteria down into a single interval scale value, objectively compared across 12 ‘largest’ airlines over time. Thusly it claims to provide data important to travelers’ decision-making process, particularly given “the global trend of airlines’ operations alliances.” Something to that effect…

However—claims abound that this entire AQR system has outlived its usefulness, that its academic sterility is of little help to real-world travelers today. Worst case, the AQR study is increasingly seen as little more than PR puffery by which airlines can tout their ratings as proof of “improving service”—to where its publication is barely newsworthy anymore, coming as it is so long after the fact.

More specifically, an AQR survey that once compared some 20 separate airlines has now narrowed to a dozen major, mainly legacy domestic carriers. In any case, consumer choices are now largely based on ticket price not service—subject, of course, to flight availability, which is further constrained by unaddressed carrier route cutting and consolidation. Indeed, many relatively lower-cost lines gain passengers despite negative AQR ratings.

Beyond that, AQR is faulted for not monitoring, factoring in safety/maintenance, on-time/weather performance all year round; voluntary bumping, loyalty/miles, class seating priority, food, inflight WiFi, truth in advertising, etc.—much less taking into account that airlines get at least 10 times as many direct complaints as their D.O.T. sources.

But perhaps most visibly, the AQR Report is riddled with numbing, heavily footnoted spreadsheet tables and graphically challenged, virtually monochromatic charts. Honestly, who has the patience, what travelers have the time to decipher and decode such glaze-over minutiae these days?

All factors weighed and considered, it would appear that Embry-Riddle’s Airline Quality Rating/28 is carrying on with the baggage of past prominence. Could be the report is in need of a significant status upgrade, all right—if not a voluntary bumping and grounding altogether. Because air travel satisfaction is far more than simply a decimal pointed numbers game, as we will soon see.  Just sayin’…