Flying-Related Concerns among Airline Customers in Finland and Sweden during COVID-19

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Although the topic is important and actual, there are several things that need to be improved in your article in order to be more "academic":

- References in the text. Most of them appear in the wrong way. First, you need to put the reference and only after that the "." See some examples in the attached file

- References in the list - Authors need to follow Sustainability rules. There are many errors, missing spaces, missing information

- Methodology - Need to be improved in order to be more clear

- Tier - Need to be explained

- Discussion of results - The text is very dense and difficult to read. Need to be added some table or figure in the middle

- Tables with results are very hard to understand

- Font - Along the text, we can find different fonts (text and tables)

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 
thank you for your valuable comments. We have made the changes as stated below:

• References in the text. Most of them appear in the wrong way. First, you need to put the reference and only after that the "." See some examples in the attached file
  • This approach is now aligned across the paper
• References in the list - Authors need to follow Sustainability rules. There are many errors, missing spaces, missing information
  • The references were fixed and aligned
• Methodology - Need to be improved in order to be more clear
  • We evaluated the options to describe the survey participant selection better but concluded that the bullet points work best in this case (especially in comparison to plain text).
• Tier - Need to be explained
  • Tier was actually explained at the end of 3.2. The lowest Tier was explained in more detail
• Discussion of results - The text is very dense and difficult to read. Need to be added some table or figure in the middle
  • We evaluated the options for adding a table but concluded that the plain text works better in this case. Another option we considered was to highlight the main items with bullet points, but this was eventually not selected
• Tables with results are very hard to understand
  • Tables are now cleaned and the number format has been changed to serve better the international audience
• Font - Along the text, we can find different fonts (text and tables)
  • The font is now the same across the paper

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

thank you very much for your paper.

I’ve some comments that might be of interest for you.

Your research is dedicated to passengers from/to Finland and Sweden. To get a better understanding of the aviation market of these two countries, you should incorporate the yearly passenger and flight volume before COVID for Finland and Sweden.

And you should describe the role of Finnair for Swedish passengers in a more detailed way.

You mentioned, that the number of responded questionnaires is high enough to deviate statistic significant conclusions (line217). Could you provide your calculations – especially for the number of Swedish participants/responses?

In lines 477 and 478 you refer SAS. SAS issues has not been addressed in the text before. The relation between SAS and Finnair is important for your statement. But, this relation has not been explained and might be unclear for interested readers of the article around the globe.

And finally, I’ve some comments related to formal aspects of your work.

Please make sure that headlines are not at the end of a page (e,g, line 145, 193, 281) – followed by the section (the text) next page.

We have a similar situation with table 1. The description of that table is in line 242… the table itself is on the next page.

If it is necessary to split tables (e.g. table 3, 4, 5, 6) incorporate the headline of those tables on top of the second part of the table too.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
thank you for your valuable comments. We have made further changes based on your suggestions.

• Your research is dedicated to passengers from/to Finland and Sweden. To get a better understanding of the aviation market of these two countries, you should incorporate the yearly passenger and flight volume before COVID for Finland and Sweden. And you should describe the role of Finnair for Swedish passengers in a more detailed way.
  • We evaluated the need to include more specific numbers per market, but as the pandemic was of global nature, we concluded that the numbers in this context can be global too. The selected approach should not have a major effect on the actual findings.
• You mentioned, that the number of responded questionnaires is high enough to deviate statistic significant conclusions (line217). Could you provide your calculations – especially for the number of Swedish participants/responses?
  • Our original estimation was that 100+ answers per category would bring reliable results. The number of Swedish participants was 120 with 107 fully completed surveys.
• In lines 477 and 478 you refer SAS. SAS issues has not been addressed in the text before. The relation between SAS and Finnair is important for your statement. But, this relation has not been explained and might be unclear for interested readers of the article around the globe.
  • We added more information about SAS role in the Nordics to this paragraph
• And finally, I’ve some comments related to formal aspects of your work. Please make sure that headlines are not at the end of a page (e,g, line 145, 193, 281) – followed by the section (the text) next page. We have a similar situation with table 1. The description of that table is in line 242… the table itself is on the next page. If it is necessary to split tables (e.g. table 3, 4, 5, 6) incorporate the headline of those tables on top of the second part of the table too.
  
  • The tables and headlines were aligned as proposed

Reviewer 3 Report

This study focuses on Finnair airline customer’s concerns during COVID-19, but the first two paragraphs of the introduction section provide so much information about financial crisis of the aviation industry in Europe and worldwide. If the authors also provide the aviation financial status in Finland and Sweden, and also compare the information with the analysis results in discussion section, this would reflect some interesting information. 

The authors mentioned that there are nine pre-determined concerns in the overview part of the section 2, but in sub-sections there are only eight out of nine, the information about “Not being able to return as planed” is missing.

The research focuses only on Finnair airline and data was collected from active passengers who are loyalty members, so the analysis results may represent behaviors and concerns only of the specific group of passengers. For example, the impact of climate change and negative public opinion towards air travel is definitely less concerns for passengers who travel frequently.

In the results section, could you explain more about the net value score? What does it represent and how important this info? Another concern in several tables is the numeric format, if you revise to international format this would be better for publishing in the international journal. 

Last but not least, the topic of article may too general compared to the content which specifically focus on Finnair customers and most of them are Finnish and Swedish.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
thank you for your valuable comments. We have made further changes based on your suggestions:

• This study focuses on Finnair airline customer’s concerns during COVID-19, but the first two paragraphs of the introduction section provide so much information about financial crisis of the aviation industry in Europe and worldwide. If the authors also provide the aviation financial status in Finland and Sweden, and also compare the information with the analysis results in discussion section, this would reflect some interesting information. 
  • We evaluated this suggestion and decided to keep the global introduction to attract international audience. As the pandemic was global, we chose to start from the wider point of view and then dig deeper into the focus markets. This could encourage further studies in other geographies as well. 
• The authors mentioned that there are nine pre-determined concerns in the overview part of the section 2, but in sub-sections there are only eight out of nine, the information about “Not being able to return as planed” is missing.
  • Actually the last two were under the same paragraph
• The research focuses only on Finnair airline and data was collected from active passengers who are loyalty members, so the analysis results may represent behaviors and concerns only of the specific group of passengers. For example, the impact of climate change and negative public opinion towards air travel is definitely less concerns for passengers who travel frequently.
  • Actually the lowest tier doesn't require frequent traveling, this was missing and we added a note about this in the text. We targeted people who travel in general in order to understand the change in the traveling behavior. 
• In the results section, could you explain more about the net value score? What does it represent and how important this info? Another concern in several tables is the numeric format, if you revise to international format this would be better for publishing in the international journal. 
  • Net Value Score is explained in the section 3.2. It indicates the importance of a certain answer, leaving the middle ones (in this context "3s" out of the calculation). The formats have been changed across the paper. 
• Last but not least, the topic of article may too general compared to the content which specifically focus on Finnair customers and most of them are Finnish and Swedish.
  • The markets were added to the title for better clarity

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Congrats with the improvements

Reviewer 3 Report

Accept in present form.