The PR firm for PricewaterhouseCoopers (“PwCâ€) sent me a link to an interesting study PwC recently completed and published focusing on strategies the airlines should be incorporating to ensure they’re meeting the needs of both business and leisure travelers.

I could write-up multiple posts covering the entire Experience Radar 2012: Customer Insight for the US Airline Industry report, as there is a great deal of research and data covered, but I’ll simply summarize a few takeaways for people like me – the mileage running and elite status junkie.

PwC received input from more than 6,000 consumers for this study and thoroughly broke out each segment of traveler within both the leisure and business demographic to derive “experience segments.†Meet my favorite among the business travelers, Premier Status Peter.

According to the study, Peter is a Gen Xer living in a major city, prefers United (yes) or Southwest (what?), is among the highest portion of people unlikely to switch airlines (agree), has the highest frequency of negative experiences a month due to travel volume, and is most influenced by positive experiences when repurchasing. Peter also seeks convenience from his elite status, not luxury – things like priority boarding, upgrades, standby, rebooking assistance and extra legroom. I couldn’t agree more.

The result below struck a little fear in my system as a travel voucher can typically be turned into more than 10,000 elite qualifying miles & 20,000 redeemable miles as a top-tier elite, so it has more value to me than a sincere apology. Both are nice, of course.

This next graphic reveals the consistency of the inconsistency of flight attendant service many of us have experienced and shows the words used most often when describing a positive or negative experience. Notice how the word “attendant†is basically equal in both? Two words on the positive front dear to any elite junkie’s heart are sizeable – upgraded and first class.

If you have the time and interest, download a copy as the other results and methodology used for the study are a fascinating read.