Air India survey flags timeliness as top customer pain point
A LocalCircles survey of 18,483 respondents found about 60% of Air India fliers reported timeliness issues in the past year, while 40% cited food quality and communication transparency. Aircraft-quality and baggage complaints were lower than in 2025.
What happened
A LocalCircles survey of 18,483 respondents found persistent Air India service issues, led by timeliness, food quality and communication. Aircraft-quality and
Key facts
- 18,483 respondents
- about 60% reported timeliness issues
- 40% flagged food-quality and communication-transparency issues
- 30% identified aircraft quality and maintenance issues
- 34% reported aircraft-quality complaints in 2026 versus 79% in 2025
- 28% reported baggage-handling issues
- 48% reported baggage complaints in 2025
- 63% male respondents
- 37% female respondents
- 44% tier-1 respondents
- 28% tier-2 respondents
- 28% tier-3/4/5 and rural respondents
Why this matters
Potential partners should view Air India’s improved aircraft and baggage perception positively but require clear service-level commitments around punctuality and customer communication.
What to watch
- Monthly on-time-performance and cancellation trends versus domestic and international peers.
- Growth in complaints mentioning delayed notifications, missed connections, refunds or call-center accessibility.
- Changes in repeat-booking rates, corporate renewals, net promoter scores and app self-service completion after disruption events.
- Civil-aviation enforcement, passenger-rights claims or compensation-related policy changes.
- Evidence that aircraft-quality and baggage complaints remain lower while timeliness and communication remain elevated.
- Competitor campaigns or corporate fare offers explicitly emphasizing punctuality and disruption support.
- Prioritize route- and station-level on-time-performance fixes using delay-cause data, especially on high-frequency business and connecting corridors.
- Deploy proactive disruption communication across app, SMS, email and airport staff, with clear delay causes, revised departure times, connection options and self-service rebooking.
- Create a service-recovery playbook with automated meal, lounge, hotel, refund or voucher eligibility based on disruption duration and passenger status.
- Link food-quality remediation to operational fixes: improve catering loading controls and offer pre-order/menu transparency on routes with recurring complaints.
- Track customer sentiment separately for delay occurrence, communication quality and recovery outcome to identify whether trust improves before absolute punctuality fully recovers.
- Use corporate-account outreach to communicate reliability initiatives and provide reporting on punctuality and disruption handling.