An investigation of airline service quality and passenger satisfaction - the case of China Eastern Airlines in Wuhan region

In a highly competitive circumstance the provision of high quality service satisfied by passengers is the core competitive advantage for an airline’s profitability and sustained development. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of service quality on passenger satisfaction by using China Eastern Airlines (CEA) as a case study. Surveys were conducted for CEA’s domestic passengers at Wuhan Tianhe International Airport in China. The results show that there isn’t a significant difference between the passengers’ expectations of desired airline service quality of CEA and its actual service quality, and the quality of airline service is important to the improvement of the level of passenger satisfaction for CEA. The results also show that there is a significant difference between the expectations of airline service quality for different travel groups: business, tourist, and VFR (visiting friends/relatives), and that there are no significant differences between the passengers’ expectation of staff’s quality of CEA and its actual quality. The results of this paper imply that CEA should consider improving service quality to gain market share rather than providing cheaper air tickets in order to complete both its domestic and international counterparts.