Courtesy of the Economist, J.D Powers has surveyed more than 12,000 passengers who took round-trip flights last year (2009) to develop its North America Airport Satisfaction Study.
The Economist notes:
The top-ranked airports in the large, medium and small segments were, respectively, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County, Kansas City and Indianapolis. Overall, though, the company found that satisfaction with airports was "considerably" lower than in other travel segments such as hotels and rental cars. That’s largely because the essentials—prompt baggage delivery, good seating and clear signs—are not being consistently met in spite of technological improvements in many areas including Wi-Fi, parking-lot management and online check-in.
That's not surprising since we are truly a captive audience.
Google offers free wifi at select airports from now until January 15th, 2010. In addition, you can give back in appreciation of free wifi towards several non-profits and Google will match your donations! Very cool.
Spread the cheer!
Here are the participating airports:
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As a road warrior, I live by my EVDO card. Anytime access to the Internet is a godsend. If you haven’t jumped on the EVDO bandwagon you should seriously think about it. In the meantime, enjoy the free wifi - compliments of Google.
Seth Godin makes a great point in a recent blog post titled, “We don’t compare ourselves to other airport restaurants”, but his quote, “Regardless, it’s better than we have been taught we should deserve” really stuck out for me as a road warrior. We have been trained to expect bad (and worsening) service in the frequent flyer world. Uncaring airline representatives, devaluation of frequent flyer points, additional service fees, more points to buy free nights, terrible customer service, bad airport food, more time away from home – we accept these things as “part of the job”. At one point frequent travelers felt free flights, free nights, and credit card points were the “benefits” which offset having to deal with all the crappy things about flying, but…
Is that still true anymore?
In most industries, bad customer service means you don’t last very long, but not for industries who serve frequent travelers. We are captive customers at airports and we pay more for bad food and bad service. We are limited to certain airlines by when and where we need to fly. We are limited to hotels by distance or cost to clients. We have limitations placed on our ability to choose. Then we get attached to “loyalty programs” and a currency which is controlled by folks who believe we are mindless point-addicts who only care about racking up enough miles to be treated with “ok” customer service (because a special 1-800 number is supposed to make us feel elite). We just suck it up. That is sad.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to change that? I don’t know the solution, but I bet it starts with us – the frequent travelers.
As I stepped out of my hotel room, this was on the front cover of USA Today. If you’re consistently flying out of a mid-sized airport (check the graph here for percentage declines), try scheduling a flight on your regular route a few months into the future to see if it still exists and plan accordingly. If you’re flying into an airport that typically supports a vacation destination, you should also review future flight routes. The financial fallout has had a huge impact on vacation and business flight routes even for the larger airports.
Plan now and save time in the future.
A recently released Senate report estimates that flight delays in 2007 cost passengers, airlines and the broader US economy more than $40 Billion. Take a moment to absorb that figure. $40 Billion from lost productivity, added operational costs to support delays, increased jet fuel consumption, and impact to other industries.
Here are a few key findings from the Senate’s Joint Economic Committee Report
- The total cost of domestic air traffic delays to the U.S. economy was as much as $41 billion for 2007 including higher airline operating costs, lost passenger productivity and time, and losses to other industries.
- Delayed flights consumed about 740 million additional gallons of jet fuel totaling $1.6 billion extra in fuel bills.
- Passengers were delayed by a total of 320 million hours, when accounting for padding in airline schedules. Almost 20 percent of total domestic flight time in 2007 was wasted in delay.
- Flight delays were longest during summer vacation months. Flight delays during the months of June, July and August averaged approximately 414,000 total hours of delay per month. Flights during December – the height of holiday traveling – totaled almost 438,000 hours of delay.
- 78% of flight delays in 2007 occurred before take-off, with 58 percent at the gate, and 20 percent during the taxi to the runway.
- 94 percent of all flight delays were caused by other flights arriving late, national system delays, or air carrier delays (less than six percent of delays were due to security or extreme weather)
The three largest airports in the New York City area, JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark airports had a total of over 40 million passengers last year. The New York City area airports combine for more than 27 million hours of passenger delays.And the average per-passenger delay at these three airports is nearly 28 minutes – among the highest in the nation.
The full report and the technical appendix can be found here
In advance of your next trip, keep an eye on whether your connection takes you through any of ’America’s Most Time-Draining Airports’. Maybe you’ll seek a new route to your destination
Can you imagine what you’d do with that extra 20% of time spent currently in airport delays?
While standing in line at Bradley International Airport, I recall a TSA employee marking flyers at various points to determine wait times. Little did I know this had a larger purpose.
I am not so sure about the accuracy of the counting method, but any data is better than the absence of data so I’ll take whatever I can get.
What I’m referring to is the TSA’s very own ”Security Checkpoint Wait Times” website!
You can submit queries based on State, Airport, and Time of Day to get an history of wait times over various times of the day. Very useful if you are trying to figure out how much time you should leave yourself, before your departure time.
Here are my results for ORD, Mondays around 6am:
That means more time for yourself and less time waiting at the airport and that’s good news!
Happy flying.
There are numerous articles that seem to believe that you are legally allowed to fly, even if you do not produce a government-issued ID. In fact, there are many experiences of people flying without an ID, after volunteering themselves to a secondary screening.
But the following appeal was denied on all accounts – which seems to refute your freedoms are being trampled on if you are required to produce government-issued identification.
While I agree requiring a government-issued ID does nothing but provide a false sense of security, it is probably in your best interests to bring your identification, just so you don’t have to deal with any additional time sinks when traveling.
Pack your ID so you’ll spend more time with your family and less time at the airport.
It’s an interesting article, but outside of making you feel ‘blessed’ if you frequent one of the airports, it really doesn’t help a business traveler.
Obviously, it wasn’t written by someone who travels, since business travelers do not have alot of control over which airport we are able to travel to or from.
It’s worth reading if, perhaps, you weren’t aware of all the business amenities provided by the 5 airports. Other than that you can skip it.
Here are the 5 airports so you can decide before clicking over: * Minneapolis – St. Paul (MSP) * Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) * Denver International (DIA) * San Francisco International (SFO) * Dallas-Fort Worth International (DFW)