Detroit, KC, Indy Tops in Airport Satisfaction Poll

Posted by: Justin Bachman on February 18, 2010

What’s your favorite airport? Chances are it is not one of the three main ones in New York. J.D. Power and Associates released its annual Airport Satisfaction Study on Thursday with Newark and LaGuardia taking the lowest spot in the large and medium airport rankings, 609 and 604, respectively, on a 1,000 point scale. New York JFK scored a 635 in the large airport category, ahead of Philadelphia, Miami, Los Angeles and Newark. The full report is here.

The top ranked airport was Indianapolis (above), which scored 777 in the small airport category, those with fewer than ten million passengers per year. Detroit (705) was the top-ranked large airport and Kansas City (742) the top medium airport. For the big airports, Detroit was followed by Denver (701), Minneapolis-St. Paul (701), Orlando (700), Phoenix (699), Charlotte Douglas (697), Dallas-Fort Worth (692), Houston-Bush Intercontinental (685), Las Vegas McCarran (682), Atlanta-Hartsfield Jackson (666), and Seattle-Tacoma (666). The large airport average score was 665.

The data for North American airports are from responses given by 12,100 travelers who took a round-trip flight last year, based on more than 24,000 evaluations.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages the three airports, said it has spent $15 billion since 1995 to improve operations and passengers’ experiences. “Our airports have fared well in other previous surveys, including JD Power's results in 2006 and 2008 when LaGuardia placed first and second respectively,” spokesman Ron Marsico said in a statement.

J.D. Power’s report draws a parallel between customer satisfaction and retail sales in terminal shops, with people who say they are “disappointed” with their airport experience spending an average of $14.12 while those who are “delighted” spend an average $20.55.

I draw another, perhaps obvious, conclusion from this poll: A new airport is better than an old one. Indianapolis is virtually a brand new airport, opened in 2008 at a cost of $1.1 billion. I have not yet had the pleasure of using it personally, but the airport’s site offers a compendium of awards and accolades. Interestingly, Indianapolis also has no dominant hub carrier and its traffic share splits pretty evenly among five players: 19% for Delta, 17% for Southwest, 14% for U.S. Airways and AirTran, and 10% for American. It is a modern, well-designed facility that does its job well, if one believes the airport award givers. Much the same can be said for other airports on the well-liked list: Portland, Tampa, Denver, Austin, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Charlotte, Chicago-Midway. All these are new or substantially renovated in recent years.

By contrast, LaGuardia and Newark are dingy relics of a past era in air travel, totems of when flying was new. They offer travelers an architectural primer on underfunded infrastructure. Likewise, much of JFK, save for the gleam of JetBlue’s chic new T5 and the cool sophistication international carriers have installed at Terminals 1 and 4, is a labyrinth of aged gloom.

These results won’t tell airport and city officials anything they don’t already know, and in a time of constrained budgets it’s not likely America’s airports are going to see the type of significant investments many travelers would appreciate. Moreover, satisfaction lists are not going to change travel patterns: We use the airports where we need to depart and arrive, as David Stempler of the Air Travelers Association told Bloomberg today. Yet such surveys may reinforce the idea that airports matter, and their neglect carries a price.