medium · GMAT Verbal

A survey of 1,000 frequent flyers found that 82% prefer the comfort of legacy carriers over the lower prices of budget airlines. Based on this, airline industry analysts concluded that the general traveling public is willing to pay a premium for additional legroom and in-flight amenities.

Which of the following identifies the most significant flaw in the analysts' reasoning?

  1. It mistakenly assumes that no single individual traveler could ever value both low ticket prices and superior in-flight comfort at the very same time.
  2. It generalizes about the entire traveling public from a sample of frequent flyers whose preferences are unlikely to represent that broader group.
  3. It confuses a mere statistical correlation between a traveler's airline choice and amenity preference with a real causal relationship.
  4. It improperly relies on a survey result expressed as a percentage figure rather than as an absolute number of the actual travelers surveyed.
  5. It fails to account for the very real possibility that some established legacy carriers might also offer fares as low as those of budget airlines.

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