“Airlines’ Buzz Scores Nosedive After Snowmaggedon [STATS]”

Airlines’ Buzz Scores Nosedive After Snowmaggedon [STATS]

Posted: 31 Dec 2010 01:30 PM PST

Airlines' Buzz Scores Nosedive After Snowmaggedon [STATS]

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Online buzz scores for United, American Airlines and USAirways lost a bit of altitude in the wake of Snowmaggedon, but no lasting damage was done to the brands, according to a report from YouGov's BrandIndex.

The report, based on an online survey of 5,000 people every day online, showed that buzz scores for those airlines, plus Delta and JetBlue, took a bit of a nosedive after the December 26 East Coast storm, which resulted in hundreds of canceled and delayed flights across the country.

Ted Marzilli, senior vice president and global managing director of BrandIndex, says the airlines' buzz scores are mostly collateral damage. "People are just taking out their frustrations somewhere," he says. "You're going to blame the airline that's not getting you from Point A to Point B."

BrandIndex's rankings are based on a 200-point scale. A +100 means a consumer has a totally positive view of a brand while a -100 means the opposite. BrandIndex is based on averaging all those scores. While United's 16-point drop during the last week is signifcant, Marzilli says, it's nowhere near the freefall Southwest experienced in February 2008, when the carrier was found to be flying Boeing 737s that it had said it had grounded because they hadn't been properly inspected for fuselage cracks. That incident prompted Southwest's buzz score to go from +75 to -40 in a week and it took the airline about six months to recover, Marzilli says.

In contrast, most of the airlines affected by the snowstorm are likely to recover much quicker, Marzilli says. More data from the report below:

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