This paper addresses efforts to design a quantitative index of characteristics and factors that comprise quality in airport facilities and operations from the perspective of all airport service customers including airlines, airport tenants, airport service operators, and consumers of airline and air cargo operations. The results of an initial survey of airport directors and consultants have identified 12 broad factors that, in their view, most affect the quality of airport operations. These factors include parking, capacity, ground transportation, shopping and restaurant services, and waiting area considerations.

PurposeThis paper aims to review the conceptual background for service quality as applied to the airline industry and use data from the Air Travel Consumer Report to examine airline quality performance on such key indicators as on‐time arrival, customer complaints, denied boarding, and mishandled baggage to determine the trend in airline service performance over the past two decades.Design/methodology/approachData collected for this study included customer complaints on flight problems, ticketing, refunds, fares, customer service, advertising, and other problems, overall carrier on‐time performance, involuntary denied boardings, and mishandled baggage. Total yearly departures by carrier were obtained from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and used to normalize the service data. Service quality rates were calculated for the industry overall and by individual carrier. The total quality rate represents the sum of the following data: the percentage of late flights, total number of consumer complaints, total number of involuntary denied boardings, and total number of mishandled baggage reports divided by total yearly departures for a particular airline. In a real sense, this rate is a measure of disquality and can be interpreted as the number of quality problems per departure.FindingsThe data show that during periods of retrenchment when airlines are reducing flight schedules due to economic downturns the level of on‐time arrival tends to improve while customer complaints, denied boardings, and mishandled baggage decline. Part of the explanation for the changes is the lack of airport and air traffic capacity to handle periods of higher traffic volume.Originality/valueAs a critical component of the transportation system, the ability of the airline industry to provide reliable, timely service is important. Understanding the factors that contribute to service problems can help guide airline decisions about process and government decisions about infrastructure needs.

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The general public perception is that service quality among US airlines has declined signi"cantly since deregulation, however, there is continuing debate among experts on the e!ect of deregulation on safety quality. Unlike safety quality, service quality is more visible to the traveling public. It is not clear, however, whether service quality is a good indicator of safety quality. We addressed this issue by examining the service and safety quality of 20 US regional carriers for 1991}1997. Service and safety rates were calculated for each carrier. Then carriers were ranked on service and safety quality. Spearman's rho correlations were calculated on these lists. The results indicate that for four of these seven years the Spearman's rho was signi"cant indicating that service quality is an excellent indicator of overall safety quality among US national and regional carriers.

The public perception is that service quality among US airlines has declined significantly since deregulation, however, there is debate among experts on the effect of deregulation on safety quality. While the experts debate, the public is left with few guidelines on the safety quality of the carriers that they fly. This study examined both the service and safety quality of the major US airlines. We were interested in the interrelationship between these two areas of overall quality since consumers are generally better able to judge the service quality of airlines. The results indicate that safety quality as a whole and for individual airlines is consistently higher than service quality levels. With the exception of one year during the study, the service level of the major carrier was not significantly related to its level of safety quality, making service quality a poor indicator of safety quality for this group of carriers.