February 6th, 2023, Shinmin Bali
While the winter storm “Elliott” might have passed, Southwest Airlines continues to face all the trouble it found itself in late last year. As per reports, the disorder and confusion could “cost the company as much as $825 million.” At over 1,700 flights delayed, Southwest Airlines was also the hardest hit following the FAA outage on January 11, 2023. To add to that, the airline is now under investigation for December’s “travel meltdown” by the US Department of Transportation.
More recently, the airline had to cancel flights again. This time it was due to the Texas ice storm.
How do things look like for Southwest Airlines, a month on from the holiday season?
According to YouGov BrandIndex - which tracks consumer sentiment towards thousands of brands daily - the airline still looks far from making a recovery. The Index score - which is an overall measure of brand health made up of General Impression, Customer Satisfaction, Quality, Value, Corporate Reputation and Recommendation scores for the brand - has gone from a net score of 25 on December 12, 2022 to 0 on January 30, 2023.
The Buzz metric - which measures whether consumers are hearing more positive or negative things about the brands - continues to be the hardest hit. From a net score of 9 on December 12, 2022, it dropped to –29 on January 30, 2023.
The Satisfaction and Current Customer metrics, where Satisfaction measures whether customers are satisfied or dissatisfied with the brand, were in positive territory.
Flyers currently don't seem keen to recommend the brand to friends and family. This is what the Recommend metric - which identifies brands that consumers tell their friends and colleagues to avoid and those they recommend to them - suggests. The scores for the metric dropped to –2 from 27 within the observation period.
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Methodology: YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. Southwest Airlines’ Value metric score is based on the question: Which of the following airlines do you think represents good value for money/poor value for money? and delivered as a net score between -100 and +100. Its Recommendation score is based on the question: Which of the following airlines would you recommend to a friend or colleagues? And which of the following airlines would you tell a friend or colleague to avoid? and delivered as a net score between -100 and +100. Index score is an overall measure of brand health, made up of General Impression, Customer Satisfaction, Quality, Value, Corporate Reputation and Recommendation and delivered as a net score between -100 and +100. Its Buzz metric score is based on the question: Which of the following airlines have you heard something positive about (whether in the news, through advertising, or talking to friends and family)? / Now which of the following have you heard something negative about over the past two weeks?, and delivered as a net score between -100 and +100. Scores are based on an average daily sample size of 1935 US adults between 12 December 2022 and 30 January 2023. Figures are based on a four-week moving average. Learn more about BrandIndex.
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