Flying was the pits last year.
Thanks to understaffing and a pilot shortage, as well as covid-infections, flight delays and cancellations were more common than ever, so much so that a flight in 2022 was 2.5 times more likely to be canceled than it would have been three years earlier, according to Sky News.
Even before the great Southwest (LUV) holiday meltdown, it was a rough time for passengers, and there continue to be reports that airlines haven’t been promptly reimbursing people for missed or delayed flights. And people aren’t happy that a limited supply of seats, coupled with a post-pandemic bump in demand and the rising price of jet fuel has caused plane tickets to outpace inflation by 25%.
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It’s been a period of uncertainty and turbulence for the aviation industry, which is struggling to recruit enough pilots to replace the people who retired early during the pandemic, while also having to deal with increasingly disruptive weather events caused by the effects of climate change.
The result has been that the aviation industry has had a public image problem since returning from the pandemic, as many people feel that it just can’t get it together and get you where you’re going on time.
A Gallup poll from August of last year found that when asked how they feel about the airline industry, the results were 6% Very Positive, 21% were Somewhat Positive, 35% were Neutral, 26% Somewhat Negative, and 11% were Very Negative.
By comparison, when asked the same question in August of 2019, the results were 11% Very Positive, 31% were Somewhat Positive, 32% were Neutral, 19% Somewhat Negative, and 4% were Very Negative.
But There Are Some Airlines People Still Like
The world is a big place, and the aviation industry contains over 1,100 airlines overall. Some companies have managed to weather the storm better than others, and the ones that were able to prioritize their customers’ comfort and experience have managed to accrue valuable goodwill that could translate into brand loyalty.
So what airlines do people actually still like these days? And which ones do people really, really not like?
The Australian online currency exchange S Money monitored the official Twitter handles of all the major airlines with a Twitter account, and then collected tweets that mentioned them.
It then analyzed the tweets using an AI sentiment tool to give either a positive or negative score. “We considered the Most Loved to be the airlines with the highest percentage of positive tweets and the Most Hated to be those with the most negative tweets,” it notes.
It has now issued a report about the Most Loved and Most Hated airlines in the world, and its findings are surprising.
- The most popular airline is Canada’s Bearskin Airlines with 53.4% of tweets about it being positive.
- The most hated airline is India’s Go First with a 73.8% negativity rating.
- In terms of American airlines, the two most disliked were Spirit Airlines (SAVE) (62.2% negativity) and Frontier Airlines (FRON) (61.9% negativity). No American airlines made the Most Loved list.
- America’s neighbors to the north have very strong opinions, as six of the 20 airlines in the top 10 most loved and hated lists are from Canada — three are loved, and three are hated.
S-MONEY
Back in the USA
The report breaks down the Most Loved and Most Hated throughout the world, and as indicated above, Spirit Airlines (which offers cheap and arguably uncomfortable flights) doesn’t fare well.
This particular list from S-Money didn’t rank the Most Loved and Most Hated airlines in America, it ranked the Most Hated and Least Hated instead, so draw your own conclusions about how Americans feel about flying these days.
S-MONEY
In terms of American flights, Spirit Airlines came in the highest at 62.2%. Delta (DAL) was right in the middle of the 14 point list, with 43.8% negative tweets. The winner of the survey (i.e., the airline people are the least mad at online) is Avelo Airlines at 18.8%.
The data for the survey was collected in December of 2022, and a limit of 10 tweets per username was instituted to reduce the impact of bots and frequently posting accounts.
