Global airline alliances: convenience or complaints?

Airline alliances—which help travellers fly seamless ly with different airlines during a single journey—often cause customer dissatisfaction due to variation in service received by a traveller during a single journey, says research by Sidd hart hS hekh ar Singh of the Indian School of Business, TrichyKrishnan, Dean, School of Management, Bennett University, andDipakCJain, honorary president of Woo song University.

The researchers came up with four reasons that cause variations in service quality of different airlines in an alliance. First, being part of an alliance stretched airlines’ service capabilities. When new members joined, member airlines were forced to cater to higher traffic flows with limited infrastructure. Second, airlines differed in policies related to extrabaggage allowance, miles accrual, missed flights or lost baggage. Third, every airline varies in the provision of “additional” services to its customers. Finally, in times of emergencies related to missed flights and lost baggage, lacking access to information that is available with the home airline, a partner may simply not be in a position to help customers.

Krishnan, Singh and Jain find that differences in services provided by member airlines are a system-wide issue across the entire alliance, and not one that can be handled by individual airlines. This problem can be successfully solved only if the governing board of the alliance takes the lead to fix the optimal service level rather than let the member airlines decide it.