Here's a surprising stat: while 80% of companies think they provide superior customer experience, only 8% of their customers feel the same way.
This satisfaction gap becomes even more crucial for airlines, where tiny details can push passengers to choose different carriers. The stakes are high - 82% of airline customers fly repeatedly, and business travel makes up 69% of all flights. Airlines must understand what makes their passengers happy to stay competitive.
A well-designed airline satisfaction survey can help you track everything from WiFi performance to how comfortable your seats are. This allows you to identify and solve problems before they hurt your revenue.
Want to create a survey that gets genuine feedback from your passengers? SurveySparrow can help you design surveys that reveal what your customers actually think.
What is an Airline Satisfaction Survey?
A airline satisfaction survey is a feedback questionnaire that passengers receive after their flight. It helps airlines learn about their travel experience. These surveys create a direct line of communication between airlines and customers. They show what's working and what needs to get better.
Airlines get passenger feedback in several ways. They use digital surveys, watch social media, and talk directly to customers. The answers help them spot areas that need attention—everything from in-flight service to how they handle bags.
These surveys aim to:
- Keep track of how happy customers are at every service point
- Find and fix problems in the passenger's experience
- Use information to make services better
- Build loyal customers by responding to their needs
Research shows something interesting. Just a 1% bump in passenger happiness can lead to a 1.5% rise in non-aeronautical revenue. The timing matters too. Feedback collected right after the experience is 40% more accurate than responses gathered a day later. This makes quick surveys a vital part of the process.
SurveySparrow's airline survey tools help you get this valuable feedback. They use different types of questions to get honest, applicable information from travelers. Our templates help you find exactly what needs work and fix any gaps in your service.
The information airlines collect helps them make smart choices about training staff, changing policies, and improving services. To name just one example, see how an airline might notice passengers asking for better seats on long flights and decide to upgrade their cabin design.
Since 95% of travelers check reviews before booking trips, these surveys do more than just improve how things run—they shape what people think about your airline. SurveySparrow helps turn passenger feedback into real changes that build customer loyalty, make operations smoother, and end up giving you an edge over competitors in the airline industry.
What Should an Airline Customer Satisfaction Survey Include?
The right questions make airline surveys work better. A good airline satisfaction survey looks at feedback from five main points during a passenger's trip.
Tracking pre-flight experiences starts with questions about clear booking options, payment choices, and how easy the website is to use. Airlines pay close attention to booking ratings because 82% use this information to improve their digital platforms.
Questions about the flight itself should cover:
- Comfort of seats and legroom space
- Clean cabins and bathrooms
- Flight attendants' service and response time
- Quality and variety of food
- Access to entertainment
Studies by J.D. Power show that airlines with trained staff have "happier and more loyal customers" even during weather delays.
Baggage handling makes a big difference - 65% of passengers say it's crucial to their satisfaction. The survey should ask about luggage arrival times, condition, and help from staff when leaving the plane.
SurveySparrow's templates mix different types of questions to get a full picture:
- Rating scales (1-5) for measuring service
- Multiple choice to check specific services
- Open questions to hear detailed feedback
Survey timing plays a crucial role. Passengers give 40% more accurate feedback right after their flight compared to later surveys.
Most airlines use Net Promoter Score (NPS) to check customer loyalty. They ask passengers to rate from 0-10 "How likely are you to recommend our airline to friends and colleagues?".
Quick surveys work best. Passengers complete shorter surveys 31% more often when they take less than 5 minutes. SurveySparrow's templates strike the right balance between detail and length to get more responses.
How to Create and Share Your Airline Survey
SurveySparrow's platform helps you build professional airline surveys through a well-laid-out process. The key to success lies in proper design, distribution, and timing.
Here are five steps to create your airline survey:
- Proposal and goals: Set clear objectives for your survey. You need to identify specific parts of the passenger experience you want to assess.
- Kickoff meeting: Bring stakeholders together to confirm survey goals and plan the implementation.
- Survey design and testing: Write questions, add them to survey software, and test them really well to ensure clarity and flow.
- Fieldwork implementation: Start your survey. Watch the original responses to make sure people understand your questions.
- Analysis and reporting: Look at collected data to find patterns that lead to practical steps.
Your airline satisfaction survey needs multiple channels to work best:
- Email surveys: Send follow-up emails after flights to get detailed feedback.
- SMS surveys: Use quick text message surveys right after the flight.
- In-app surveys: Add surveys to your airline mobile app for smooth feedback collection.
- Website surveys: Place popup surveys, slide-up surveys, or feedback buttons on your website.
Survey timing substantially affects response rates. Weekdays work better than weekends. Monday shows the best results. The best times are early mornings (before 10 AM) or late afternoons when passengers respond more.
Send your surveys at these key moments:
- Right after booking to learn about the purchase experience
- Soon after the flight while memories are fresh
- After customer service interactions to see how well issues were resolved
Password protection and domain white-labeling build trust with your respondents. SurveySparrow lets you create surveys in multiple languages for international passengers.
Short surveys get more responses. The best airline satisfaction surveys balance detailed feedback with respect for your passengers' time.
How to Build and Analyze Your Survey
Want to make collecting feedback easier? Free airline survey templates help you save time and get valuable passenger insights.
An airline survey template is a ready-to-use questionnaire made for airlines to collect passenger feedback. These templates have questions that cover everything in the travel experience, from booking to baggage claim.
A complete airline survey template should ask about:
- How easy it was to buy tickets
- The check-in experience
- Quality of in-flight service
- Staff's helpfulness and professionalism
- Speed of baggage handling
- Overall satisfaction and whether passengers would recommend
SurveySparrow provides airline passenger satisfaction survey templates with advanced features like sentiment analysis and support for multiple languages. You can collect feedback through different channels to get more responses.
Here's how to make the most of an airline survey template:
- Customize the design: Add your airline's branding elements to create a professional survey
- Tailor the questions: Adjust questions to match your specific services
- Apply survey logic: Use skip and display logic to customize each response
- Preview before launch: Check if everything lines up with your goals
SurveySparrow's platform makes it easy to customize with different question types, multimedia options, and skip/display logic. The AI survey maker can generate airline survey questions quickly.
Want to start right away? Download SurveySparrow's free airline passenger satisfaction survey template. Sign up for an account, pick your template, and start gathering valuable feedback to improve your passenger experience.
These specialized templates help you understand what passengers expect by analyzing their priorities, booking habits, and travel experiences. This knowledge helps you optimize operations, make passengers happy, and promote loyalty in the competitive airline industry.
Conclusion
Airlines use satisfaction surveys to boost passenger loyalty and improve service quality. Your survey should cover all touchpoints from booking through post-flight experiences with clear and focused questions.
SurveySparrow templates simplify this process and provide ready-to-use questions that capture meaningful passenger feedback. These templates help you save time while collecting data about every significant aspect of the travel experience.
Want to turn passenger feedback into useful insights? Book a demo with SurveySparrow to learn how our survey tools can help your airline create better experiences.
Note that successful airlines grow through passenger feedback. Start collecting valuable insights today to create better flying experiences tomorrow.
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