New Which? survey reveals UK’s best and worst airlines for customer service in 2024

The UK’s best and worst airlines for customer service over the past year have been revealed in a new Which? survey.

It’s peak holiday season for millions of Brits nationwide at the moment, with August having just arrived and schools across the country now out for the summer, so it stands to reason that more people will be hopping on a plane in search of some sunshine than usual, and with that, airlines will have a lot more customers to keep satisfied.

But which airlines are considered to be the ‘worst’ when it comes to customer service?

Well, in a bid to get to the bottom of this, Which? decided to run one of its annual surveys to see “where customer service is going wrong” – and, on the flip side, where it’s going right – and find out who the worst offenders are.

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The leading consumer group asked more than 1,000 adult passengers who had travelled with and contacted a major UK airline in the last year about their experiences of customer service, and asked them a series of questions to answer with ratings based on how satisfied or dissatisfied they were with that experience.

Which? also used undercover researchers posing as customers to contact some of the UK’s most popular airlines, as well as those that previously rated poorly for customer service or rated poorly overall in its recent surveys, during the busy Easter break earlier this year.

British Airways, easyJet, Jet2, KLM, Tui, Ryanair, Vueling, and Wizz Air were the airlines contacted.

Unfortunately, it was Wizz Air that claimed the not-so-coveted top spot on the 2024 list, with fellow budget airline Ryanair following close behind in second.

Wizz Air received the lowest scores with only +13 satisfaction rating for ‘overall customer service’, which is 39 points behind the sector average of +52, while Ryanair also performed poorly and sits at nearly half the sector average with a mere +28. 

British Airways was the only other airline to perform below average for ‘overall customer service’, sitting third-from-bottom of the table with a score of +46, which is 6 points below the average.

While Which? says its latest survey findings go some way to suggesting there may be some underlying issues affecting airlines’ customer service that needs to be addressed, and that improving these should be a “priority to regain customer trust and satisfaction” for the airlines found to be the worst offender, it’s not all doom and gloom.

That’s because, on the positive side, Jet2 achieved the highest satisfaction scores across nearly all categories – including ‘overall customer service’.

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The only exception for Jet2 was the question ‘how well my issue/query was resolved’, where Emirates instead claimed the top spot here, with a rating of +81. 

Featured Image – Nithin Shetty (via Unsplash)