The following appeared in an Avia Airlines departmental memorandum.
“On average, 9 out of every 1,000 passengers who traveled on Avia Airlines last year filed a complaint about our baggage-handling procedures. This means that although some 1 percent of our passengers were unhappy with those procedures, the overwhelming majority were quite satisfied with them; thus it would appear that a review of the procedures is not important to our goal of maintaining or increasing the number of Avia's passengers.”
Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.
The author's conclusion is that the review of the baggage-handling procedures is not important to the company's goal of maintaining or increasing the number of Avia's passengers. To justify this conclusion, the author points out that on average, last year, 9 out of every 1,000 passengers who traveled on Avia Airlines filed a complaint about the procedures. Also, the author then assumes that the overwhelming majority were quite satisfied with the procedures since only 1 percent of passengers were unhappy with them. Close scrutiny, however, reveals several logical flaws of this argument.
To begin with, the argument turns on the assumption that customers did not complain were actually satisfied with the procedures. However, it is not necessarily the case. It is entirely possible that people express their displeasure simply by not returning the complaint sheets or by not taking the fly of Avia Airlines any longer. The greater percentage of such people, the weaker the argument's evidence as a sign of passengers' satisfaction toward the procedures is. Lacking more sufficient information about passengers' attitudes, the author cannot assume that the great majority of passengers are pleased with the baggage-handling procedures.
