Higher expectations of passengers do really sense: Development and validation a multiple scale-FliQual for air transport service quality

A large number of literatures on public transports have primarily focussed on the core perception of service quality of transit sectors. Similarly, meagre researchers have studied the augmented portion of services which, in fact, matter a lot in choosing a particular airline, but the studies have partly covered the same instead of the complete air journey. The present study proposes a complete air passenger perceived service quality (APPSQ) throughout the journey and determines all the dimensions such as availability of accessible services, food and beverage services, staff services, courteous behaviour of employees, and updated technical services with reference to the developing world. This research has attempted to develop and validate a comprehensive scale- FliQual(flight quality) to measure the contribution of the above five dimensions to APPSQ. In the line of the scale development process, both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used in four studies; ultimately a five-factor model -FliQual was developed, validated at confirmatory level, and was replicated to address the existing gaps. The results revealed that passengers emphasized availability of accessible services as the first priority, followed by food and beverages, staff services consecutively as core services, whereas employee behaviour and updated technology service went secondary. Furthermore, the study explores an acceptable level of service quality, i.e., 0.81 in the range of [0.6 0.9] obtained from fuzzified results.