Airline satisfaction hits record level

• Passengers have begun to stomach the higher ticket costs and fees.
• Another factor boosting the industry's overall satisfaction score was an improvement in airlines' in-flight services.
• The biggest year-over-year improvements were shown by traditional airlines.

Six years after major airlines stunned passengers by starting to charge for checked bags, igniting a fee frenzy that continues today, travelers appear to have grudgingly accepted the industry's new reality.

Passenger satisfaction with airlines is at an all-time high, with the improvement driven by an increase in satisfaction with ticket costs and fees, according to the J.D. Power 2014 North America Airline Satisfaction Study, due out today.

The industry's overall satisfaction score rose 17 points from a year ago, to 712 out of 1,000. That tops the previous high of 692 in 2006, the first year of the study using the current methodology.

Satisfaction with ticket costs and fees, which carries the most weight of the seven factors that go into the overall score, rose to 642 from 618 in 2013. In 2009, the year after the new fees kicked in, satisfaction in the category barely topped 600.

Rick Garlick, head of J.D. Power's global travel and hospitality practice, said the surprising results don't mean travelers are enamored with fees. Rather, they have simply begun to stomach them.

"It's like anything else, after awhile you just grow a tolerance to it,'' he said. "I don't want to say memories are short. It's just simply that people get more used to it."

Garlick said another factor boosting the industry's overall satisfaction score was an improvement in airlines' in-flight services, the category with the second-greatest impact on the score after costs and fees.

"Airlines are finding more ways to keep people engaged, giving them more things to do," he said.

J.D. Power breaks the industry into low-cost carriers and traditional carriers for its individual rankings. JetBlue Airways scored 789 this year, claiming the top spot overall and the top spot among low-cost carriers for the 10th consecutive year. JetBlue's score last year was 787.

Southwest Airlines, a dominant carrier in Phoenix with nearly 170 daily departures, was just behind JetBlue, at 778, up eight points from 2013.

The biggest year-over-year improvements were shown by traditional airlines. Alaska Airlines' score rose 20 points, to 737, giving it third place overall and first in its category. Delta was second with a score of 693. American Airlines was third at 684, up 24 points.

US Airways, the other major player at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, showed the biggest jump in satisfaction from last year but still ranked last among the six traditional carriers in the study and overall. The airline, which was based in Tempe until its December merger with American, earned a satisfaction score of score of 656, up 26 points from 2013.

Even with the improvement, airlines still lag other businesses, including other travel businesses, in customer satisfaction, J.D. Power says. The hotel industry's score is 777; rental cars are at 775.

The study is based on a survey of 11,370 airline passengers who flew on a major airline between March 2013 and March 2014.