How BA’s rivals measure up
WITH the holiday season in full flow we’ve taken a look at how airlines are perceived. The top six airlines on the BrandIndex index score (combined for six key measures) are Virgin Atlantic, Emirates, British Airways, Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific.
The detail reveals an interesting pattern. While UK and Australian firms perform well overall, they do less well on proportional scores (just those with positive or negative opinions).
This indicates that more people use and are aware of the strengths and weaknesses of BA, Qantas and Virgin and are generally positive towards them, but they cannot compete with Asian rivals in terms of positive sentiment among those that use them.
Satisfaction is a great example. Looking at the standard chart, BA has a clear lead on +24. The BA score comes from 32 per cent of people being satisfied and eight per cent dissatisfied.
Compare that with Singapore Airlines, where seven per cent are satisfied and less than 0.5 per cent dissatisfied and we see that BA may do better at getting people on the plane but Singapore knows how to keep them happy. This is reflected in the proportional chart showing Singapore, Emirates and Cathay vying for first place, Qantas and Virgin slightly further back and BA at the still good, but significantly lower +60.
So in many ways comfort for all of these airlines: BA still the leading airline in the country, but they don’t keep their customers as happy as some of their smaller competitors. Stephan Shakespeare is the chief executive of YouGov