A non-additive model for evaluating airline service quality

This study develops a non-additive model for evaluating and improving the service quality of airlines and compares its results with the conventional additive method. Service quality is a composite of various attributes and many in a system have inter-dependent characteristics that may not be correctly evaluated using conventional additive measures. A fuzzy integral is thus proposed. Factor analysis is initially used to extract some independent common-factors and fuzzy integral used to integrate the performance ratings of inter-dependent attributes in each common-factor. For the analytic hierarchy process a pair-wise comparative approach is adopted to determine the relative weights linking each independent common-factor. Finally, Grey relation analysis and simple additive weight method are used to find airline service quality. A study of international airlines is conducted for verification. Safety and reliability emerge as the critical factors of service quality. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.