BTN/ACNielsen Airline Survey 2005: Methodology

The eighth Business Travel News Annual Airline Survey is a unique measure of corporate travel buyer perceptions of airline performance in negotiating for and delivering service, and maintaining preferred relationships. This year, for the first time, BTN's sister company ACNielsen conducted the survey by inviting via e-mail a randomly selected subset of qualified readers and members of the BTN research council. Of 9,100 total invitees, a total of 265 respondents completed an online questionnaire during August and September 2005.

The domestic survey contained a list of the 16 largest domestic airlines as identified by the U.S. Department of Transportation, excluding the regional affiliates of major carriers. Airlines that elicited answers from less than 10 percent of the survey base were excluded from this report.

Asked to grade only those airlines with which they had done business in the past year, respondents ranked the carriers on a scale of one (poor) to five (excellent) in 15 categories addressing services and value to the corporate travel manager. Several new categories were included this year, including quality of customer service. Scores in other new areas—covering airline options, coverage, trust, professionalism, business travel orientation and understanding—were factored into the final overall average score for each carrier but not presented in this report.

Presented categories were developed through a series of exchanges with travel buyers, corporate agency managers and airline sales executives to reflect more clearly the way in which corporate air travel buyers perceive each airline.

Not every respondent rated every airline in every category, and those who left out a category in their ratings were not included in the average rating for that category or airline. All categories were weighted equally when calculating overall score.

An international segment included those U.S. carriers with extensive overseas operations, as well as the largest foreign carriers serving U.S. points. Airlines that elicited answers from less than 10 percent of the survey base were excluded from this report.

Respondents represented companies with annual U.S. booked air volumes of all sizes. Air program size distribution was as follows: Less than $2 million, 54 percent; $2 million to $12 million, 29 percent; $13 million to $30 million, 11 percent; more than $30 million, 6 percent. The geographic distribution of represented companies was as follows: Northeast, 23 percent; South, 19 percent; Midwest, 25 percent; Northwest, 8 percent; Southwest 25 percent.

All 2005 Annual Airline Survey results were compiled and tabulated by ACNielsen.