Customer satisfaction can be measured in a number of ways. It can be through straight surveys, focus groups, monitoring direct feedback and even those green, yellow and red buttons with the smiley faces you see at some airports.

Keeping people happy is vital when in a service business. As the old saying goes, a happy person will tell a few friends about it, while someone unhappy will tell everyone!

Customer Satisfaction for European Airlines

UBS Evidence Labs do an overall customer satisfaction rating for European airlines. While I don’t have the detail of the methodology to hand, it is based on people’s online ratings. Presumably they look at a variety of sites to find their information.

According to their research, Dutch airline KLM comes out at the top of the pile. Considering KLM is generally accepted to be the oldest airline in the world, no doubt all that experience makes a difference. You can see the top ten below.


Ireland’s Aer Lingus comes out second, which is no surprise to me. The Irish carrier prides itself on its service, and is well known within the country for this. A hallmark is the care and attention given to families with children, making them the number one choice in this segment.

Austrian Airlines comes next, followed by TUI which is the world’s largest charter airline. Rounding out the top five is low fares carrier easyJet, which also has a reputation for quality, especially compared to the competition.

Overall Thoughts

The customer satisfaction list from UBS is certainly interesting, especially for the mix of airlines. All types are represented, from charter and low fares airlines to traditional network carriers, they’re all there.

Norwegian is the only surprise from my perspective, as I have never really come across anything particularly mentioning them being service oriented. That being said, I’d likely be satisfied with a very low fare across the Atlantic, regardless of the service, so perhaps that has an influence on the scores.

What do you think of these customer satisfaction scores? Does it fit in with what you’ve experienced? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

To never miss a post, follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
All my flight and lounge reviews are indexed here so check them out!

Featured image by Patrick Kop via KLM.
Graph sourced via TUI on LinkedIn.