We’ve written before about the relative outperformance within the airline industry of low-cost carriers (like Spirit, Frontier, and Allegiant) during the economically-challenging stretch of the pandemic.
In this analysis, we revisit the airlines to look at how customer satisfaction compares to unit revenue on an airline-by-airline basis. We use TRASM (total revenue per available seat mile) to measure unit revenue at the airlines, which serves as a rough estimate for how “expensive” each carrier is. Ultimately, it looks like you get what you pay for with airline travel.
The more expensive carriers report much higher satisfaction levels than the low-cast carriers, overall. However, the operator with the highest customer satisfaction (JetBlue) landed right in the middle of the group in terms of unit revenue.