I'm not sure if this correspondent wanted his name withheld or not so I'll err on the side of protecting his identity…
As an employee of United Airlines I think the most pertinent quote in the article about consumer satisfaction regarding airlines was the following one about the passengers themselves, "They buy primarily on price, and very little else," he said. "The result of that is very low service and a business model of cost-cutting that really leaves no one happy, certainly not the businesses, the shareholders or the flying public."
That really says it all. When I came to United in 1991 we offered a full service coach product, with meals on flights of 2 hours or longer. Southwest offered a bag of peanuts, a cup (not a can) of soda, and a cattle call boarding process. United could take you from coast to coast on either a non-stop between major cities or a one stop between smaller cities. On Southwest they took at least three flights to get you across the country.
United and other full service carriers could not entice the average traveler (plain folks going on a vacation) to pay any kind of premium for this higher level of service. Frequent business travelers did appreciate the difference but it was not enough to keep the business model. The internet made the situation even worse with so many sites showing all airfares between cities at a click of the mouse and intensifying the cost cutting.
So today we have very low prices, frequently so low that it costs the airline more than they charge to get you from "A" to "B". No industry can survive when their product costs more to make than they can charge to sell it, and the industry is going to consolidate in order to return to a business model where some level of profit is more routine and not an exception.
It's ironic that the carrier that drove the airline industry to where it is today (Southwest) still gets a pass from you and the rest of the traveling public because they don't expect much from them. While the same people apply a double standard to former full service carriers wanting them to give their former level of service at today's prices.
Southwest gets no pass from me. I'm just as rankled at them when they lose my luggage — as they do with alarming frequency — as I am with United when I have a problem and I can't find a United employee in the whole bloomin' terminal willing to discuss and solve it. I don't think either situation is acceptable, regardless of how much or how little the ticket cost.
If you search this site stem to stern, you'll find plenty of complaints from me about various air carriers. Not a one of them relates at all to whether I got peanuts or a can (as opposed to a cup) of soda. I suspect a key reason that Southwest is now one of the healthier companies in its field is that they figured out long ago that most people didn't care that much about refreshments. What we care about is getting from "A" to "B" with our luggage as close to "on time" as is possible, and we care about having competent service to assist us when something occurs that disrupts that process.
There's a certain minimum standard of service that I think it's reasonable to expect when you fly. If an airline cannot price their flights low enough to be competitive and still deliver that minimum level then I think they're guilty of bad judgment. It's the same kind of bad judgment that would be in play if they said, "Yeah, we know these ten planes have wings that are liable to fall off in flight…but we can't afford to fix them because we need to get fares down."
With the Internet unlikely to close down soon, comparison shopping is a new reality in the business. The carriers that survive will be the ones that learn to adapt to that fact o' life. I don't particularly like Southwest and before my most recent experience with United, I'd have been willing to pay a little more to fly United instead of Southwest if they (and I) were flying to the same city at the approximate time I wished to travel. I am no longer willing.
In any kind of business, if your get a Customer Satisfaction score of 56 out of 100, you're doing something wrong. It's too easy to blame it on the consumers and wail that they won't pay enough. Even if that's true — and it may be to some extent, though somehow Southwest got a 79 in that survey — that's not going to rescue your company. Merging with another airline people don't like won't, either. What will is if people like me stop having bad experiences when they fly. If for some reason you can't price your fares as low as Southwest and still make a profit…well, imagine the situation where your flight to where I'm going is $110 and Southwest's is $90. Then give me one good reason to spend the extra twenty bucks…because I certainly will. I'll bet a lot of people would. We just don't see that one good reason.