Southwest, Pizza Hut Top Consumer Rankings

New data from an annual private economic survey show that people are down on airlines, up on pizza and very happy with express mail services.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index was started at the University of Michigan and is now maintained privately. It shows a decade of consumer trends by industry.

On Tuesday, the group said Southwest Airlines gets the top score for customer satisfaction among airlines, but passenger satisfaction with airlines dropped another 1.5 percent to an ACSI score of 65—a very low score that keeps getting worse, the group says.

In all, airlines have the lowest score of any industry group, tied with newspapers (also at 65) and just beating out the Federal government (at 65.4). Subscription TV providers (66) and local government (68.3) round out the bottom five.

What do Americans like the most? The answers are electronics (85), express mail (84) and soft drinks (84), with apparel, pet food and personal care products tied at 83.

Pizza Hut edged out Starbucks among limited service restaurants among the new data released on Tuesday.

Researchers said there was good news, too, for McDonald's, even though it had the lowest grade in its group. Its score was up more than 7 percent from last year.

“Since the gap to its competitors has narrowed, this may well be the sweet spot for McDonald’s,” said Claes Fornell from the ACSI. “It’s not that the Golden Arches operation is so big that its revenue is immune to low customer satisfaction, but rather it is less impacted by low satisfaction compared with the competition."

But people are clearly unhappy with airlines, especially when it gets lower grades than the federal government in a recession era.

The kicker is the new policy of many airlines to charge for checked baggage.

"Passengers who pay for checked bags are much less satisfied than those who don’t (an ACSI score of 58 compared to 68)," the group says. "They also are more dissatisfied now than a year ago (-3%). Since nearly half of all fliers pay bag fees, the negative impact on their satisfaction is significant."

American Customer Satisfaction Index (By Industry)