Do Low Cost Carriers Provide Low Quality Service?

This paper addresses the question of whether low cost carriers provide low quality service. Considerable work has been done on various aspects of airline service quality, including: examining the causes of flight delays and cancellations, investigating service quality during irregular airport operations, and exploring the link between on-time performance and airline ticket prices. Little research has been conducted, however, on the performance of low cost carriers. This paper attempts to fill this void in the literature by examining the on-time performance of six million domestic flights in 2006. We find considerable evidence indicating that low cost carriers offer more reliable flight schedules.