The latest customer satisfaction survey of major airports in the country finds hub destinations out of Valley airports rank among the best.
The J.D. Power 2022 North American Airport Satisfaction Study is based on more than 26,000 air passenger questionnaires to rank mega, large and medium airports. The survey did not rank smaller airports, such as those here in the Rio Grande Valley.
Although these rankings don’t reflect directly on Valley International Airport, Brownsville-South Padre Island International Airport, or McAllen International Airport, they do indicate that higher rankings for the big airports Valley passengers fly to can mean a happier traveling experience.
And overall passenger satisfaction is an important consideration since it is dropping, mostly due to rampant flight cancellations and crowded terminals. Another factor is inflationary pressure translating to higher ticket prices, and many passengers complained about lack of parking.
Among mega airports, Minneapolis-Saint Paul won the highest ranking in the satisfaction index, beating out San Francisco International, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County, John F. Kennedy in New York, Harry Reid International in Nevada and Orlando International.
Dallas/Fort Worth International ranked eighth, right behind Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International. Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental ranked 16th.
In the large airport category, Tampa International led the way, with Dallas Love Field third. William P. Hobby in Houston ranked eighth and San Antonio International ranked ninth.
Austin-Bergstrom International ranked 15th.
Indianapolis International led the medium airport category.
“Because of the way airlines do business, obviously they want to concentrate people at their hubs,” said Francisco Partida, director for development and security at Brownsville-South Padre Island International Airport. “The passenger experience through their journey impacts their perception of air travel and how likely they are to book another flight.”
“And that experience could change, or jade their perception of air travel, and we’ve just lost a customer, right?” he added.
Jeremy Santoscoy, deputy director of aviation at McAllen International Airport, agrees that the interconnection among airports is, in passengers’ minds, part of the same cloth. And if one airport lets them down, it diminishes the overall travel experience.
“Most of the large and medium hubs are served by the legacy carriers which makes up about almost 80 percent of our market share, with the legacies, American, United,” Santoscoy said. “The majority of our passengers are traveling through those large hubs which are DFW and George Bush International, so it is good to hear customer satisfaction is there for those folks.”
At Valley International, Nicolas Mirman, director of air service and business development, said bigger airports are by their nature less passenger friendly.
“Airports like Minneapolis, or Atlanta, Dallas, people really don’t like them that much, yet those airports’ main reason to be is connectivity,” Mirman said. “When you’re able to go from one plane to another one within 20 to 40 minutes, that’s pretty awesome.”
Perhaps part of the reason for the overall satisfaction decline for air travelers is not making connections due to thousands of canceled and delayed flights this year. Airlines blame pilot and crew availability issues, although those haven’t been a big problem here in the Valley.
“It’s when the crew in Houston or the crew in Dallas for American, when they time out and are unable to send the aircraft down here, that’s when we get impacted,” Brownsville’s Partida said, referring to flight time limits for pilots and crew. “But on the local level, everything’s operating good.”
McAllen International has led Valley airports in annual total passenger enplanements for years.
“We’ve seen some of the seats in the market a little bit reduced, I guess flights have been reduced, but seats year-over-year are actually about the same, and that’s because we’ve been getting more mainline (larger) aircraft with the legacy carriers that kind of makes up for some of the flight reductions,” Santoscoy said. “Seats have been relatively stable year-over-year but numbers are looking really well. We’re at about 5 percent year-over- year of an increase, so 2021 being our record-setting year, activity is there.”
“Do we have enough seats in the market to keep up with demand? I would say no.”
Yet Valley airports realize the airlines’ hub model isn’t exactly conducive to passenger satisfaction. Many of the mega airports can be downright intimidating.
“What I would highlight is that Dallas (DFW) is the second-largest airport in the world, and yes it is huge, and people who are not used to traveling do find it too much to deal with, I guess,” Mirman said. “But they are taking you to pretty much any corner in the world in less than 48 hours, and they’re doing that for more than 100 million passengers a year.
“It’s difficult to make an airport like that customer-friendly,” he added.
