Incidents vs Accidents: to those who say airlines should be measured on incidents? Which incidents? Reported incidents? A good airline with a good non-punitive reporting culture will report a lot more incidents than an airline operating in a loss-of-face cultural environment which tends to sack any pilot who self-reports an error. Furthermore, many reportable incidents are not necessarily due to the quality of the airline, they include anything that may have affected the safety of flight, such as weather, ATC, etc.
The number of incidents reported by an airline bears absolutely no relevance to the quality of their HANDLING of the incident, so as not to have an incident lead to a fatal accident, which is the true measure of safety.
Gobble is, as usual, also correct... Statistics of the past also do not directly identify the true measure of an airline's safety today. And accident record cannot be the only measure. Otherwise I would be booking a ticket on Scoot's maiden voyage... It would be the only airline of the day to have never had so much as an accident, incident or even a delay for that matter.
Satisfaction surveys: the question asked is along the lines of did the airline meet your expectations? Well if I flew Garuda maybe I would be pretty damn satisfied just to get to my destination, so the answer would have to be yes. Low cost airlines often defeat full service airlines in these surveys because the expectation was not high to begin with.
Hyundai drivers are probably more satisfied than Mercedes drivers for the same reason: their expectations are lower because they paid one third of the price for their vehicle. A problem in the first 6 months of ownership of a Hyundai might be just put down to "one of those things, after all it's only a Hyundai" whereas the Mercedes owner might be screaming blue murder at the dealership and writing letters to the CEO because he didn't part with that much cash to have to take it back to the dealer because he noticed a missed stitch in his llama leather interior.