AIRLINE PASSENGERS’ SATISFACTION IN THE CONTEXT OF COVID-19 OUTBREAK: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS BETWEEN EUROPEAN LOW-COST AND TRADITIONAL CARRIERS
AIRLINE PASSENGERS’ SATISFACTION IN THE CONTEXT OF COVID-19 OUTBREAK: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS BETWEEN EUROPEAN LOW-COST AND TRADITIONAL CARRIERS

Author(s): Laura Diaconu (Maxim)
Subject(s): Economy
Published by: Editura Universităţii »Alexandru Ioan Cuza« din Iaşi
Keywords: Coronavirus pandemic; passengers’ satisfaction; low-cost carriers; traditional airlines;
Summary/Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic brought many challenges to most of the economic sectors, at the global level. The airline industry was, however, among the worst affected. Throughout history, the airline industry has faced numerous challenges, but none of them had such a magnitude and so serious consequences as the current pandemic. It is known that service quality has been integrated as a major component in any business’s strategic plan. This happened because service quality has increasingly been considered a key factor in the discrimination between service products and in building the competitive advantage. Customer satisfaction plays an important role in motivating consumers' behavioural loyalty, which translates into favourable feedback, repeated purchases, recommending the product or service to others and even into service innovation that would improve clients’ experiences. In the case of the airlines industry, to survive the fierce competition, companies are required to effectively manage their passengers’ relations so that they guarantee and retain customers’ satisfaction, with the ultimate goal of driving future income. The same as in the other businesses, in the airline industry, the customers’ needs and demands are usually affected by several factors, of which service quality remains the most significant aspect. A crisis, such as the COVID- 19, may lead to radical changes in the passengers’ experiences and expectations. Thus, not only it is important to understand how passengers evaluate airlines, but also to identify which dimensions of satisfaction are the most important for the passengers in the context of the current pandemic. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to investigate the differences in customers’ satisfaction between the European low-cost and traditional carriers, during the COVID-19 period, as well the factors that influence their satisfaction. The empirical analysis was conducted on secondary data, consisting in 3,125 reviews written by passengers on well-known airline reviews websites.

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