[March 12, 2007] Vanderbilt Expert Can Talk About Recent Problems With Airline Customer Dissatisfaction Tweet (Ascribe Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) NASHVILLE, Tenn., March 12 (AScribe Newswire) -- It's time to regulate the airline industry; customers need a passengers' bill of rights. A recent massive snowstorm grounded and delayed hundreds of flights across the country. While many airlines found successful ways to handle the delays, some Jet Blue customers were trapped on planes for more than nine hours, with overflowing toilets. Other passengers were forced to camp out for days at airports, with no clear solution from Jet Blue. Airline expert Michael Lapre believes this latest evidence of massive miscalculations from the airlines, shows that it is time for regulation. Lapre has done extensive research on customer complaints and the airline industry. He says an airline passengers' bill of rights will help prevent costly lawsuits, like the class action suit filed against Northwest Airlines in 1999 after a similar snowstorm. Lapre says it will also force the airlines to think about the big picture and prepare an emergency plan ahead of time, to protect passengers. Airlines have a big incentive to make passengers happy, says Lapre. A passengers' bill of rights will create regulations to make those passengers more secure. Lapre's earlier research on customer dissatisfaction found, if airlines want to reduce costs in the long term, they must fix quality first. Otherwise you'll just keep pouring money into fixing quality problems; you have to protect the customer. Michael Lapre is an associate professor of management at the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management. He co-authored an award-winning paper on airline customer complaints called Performance Improvement Paths in the U.S. Airline Industry: Linking Trade-offs to Asset Frontiers. He recently completed research on mishandled baggage by the airlines and whether airlines learn to reduce customer dissatisfaction after consumer complaints. - - - - CONTACT: Amy Wolf, Vanderbilt University News Service, 615-322-NEWS, [email protected] NOTE TO EDITORS: Vanderbilt has a campus broadcast facility with a dedicated fiber optic line for live TV interviews and a radio ISDN line. A high resolution photo of Lapre is available at www.vanderbilt.edu/news. Copyright 2007 AScribe inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]