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Writing airline reviews | Useful tips


Reviews enable us to take informed decisions about buying products. They are fundamental in today’s knowledge-based economy. Review pioneers such as booking.com and tripadvisor.com have changed the way we book travel. Hotel ratings are crucial in choosing one hotel over another. Reviews are somewhat less popular when we talk about airlines and booking air travel.

Very few online travel agencies show airline ratings in the list of their search results. Some do show information such as the seat pitch or on time rating, but this is as far as it goes. The main driver behind airfare purchase decisions has been the ticket price followed by flight times and trip length. Airline quality comes after.

A common city pair search in skyscanner.com may return over 100 possible flight combinations. There are so many unanswered questions regarding seat comfort, on time performance and cancellations, customer service, fleet age and safety, in-flight entertainment and prices, catering onboard, flight connection comfort, transit process at connecting airports, etc. Reading airline reviews can help us really choose better.

One of the reasons airline reviews are not popular is that they are sometimes too generic and come across as “The flight was too long, they served us cold food” or “There was a snow storm and our flight was delayed by more than 5 hours, no-one from the staff explained us the situation”. Very often the reviews refer to situations common to any airline and such information is of little value. When we talk about specific reviews like the ones referring to connecting flights, the situation is a bit different. Passengers may learn valuable information such as “it takes an hour to transit from terminal 1 to terminal 2”, “sleeping at this airport is impossible, they close it for the night”, “if you miss your connecting flight, they will not rebook you”. For this reason, when writing airline reviews it is important to convey the part of your experience, which will be of help to others.

Our main goal when writing airline reviews should be to help other travellers like us. For example, many people traveling on connecting flights are primarily interested in the following information regarding their upcoming trips:

  • Will my baggage safely transfer to the end point?

Concern: My luggage may get lost at the connecting airports, items stolen or damaged
Action: I can remove valuable items from checked-in luggage, shrink-wrapped it or avoid short transfers

  • Can I sleep at the connecting airport?

Concern: I have an overnight connection with a long stopover.
Action: I can book an airport hotel for a small amount of money

  • Can I make my connection in 1h?

Concern: I am afraid of missing my connecting flight.
Action: Get tips on transiting faster

When writing a review, we should feature details from our experience that may be of some use to others. We may mention that the flight attendant was rude, but that will not help other passengers. Instead we may write “Our flight attendant had no information about our connecting flight and didn’t want to help us”.

Sometimes by merely making statements you don’t help others. For example “The bottled water at our connecting airport was crazy expensive” may make much more sense if we add “But we found a filtered water dispenser located near the relax zone of terminal A”. This way you are making a difference as you are helping fellow travellers save money.

If you have traveled by air in the last year, you can try your airline reviews writing skills here. And most importantly remember that by spending only a few minutes, you can actually help someone else save hours.

Written by Connectionreview.com

info@connectionreview.com