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WASHINGTON – U.S. airlines scored their second-best performance last year in the more than two decades that researchers have been measuring airline quality, with Virgin America the leader, says an annual report released Monday.
The report ranked the 14 largest U.S. airlines based on on-time arrivals, mishandled bags, consumer complaints and passengers who were bought tickets but were turned away because flights were over booked.
Airline performance in 2012 was the second highest in the 23 years that Wichita State University at Omaha in Nebraska and Purdue University in Indiana have tracked the performance of airlines. The airline’s best year was 2011.
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Airline rankings Annual airline quality rankings released Monday. Based on government data on on-time arrivals, mishandled bags, consumer complaints and passengers with tickets who were denied seats due to overbookings. Here’s how the airlines ranked in 2012 and the previous year. 1) Virgin America (new to the ranking this year *) 2) JetBlue (3) 3) AirTran (1) 4) Delta (6) 5) Hawaiian (2) 6) Alaska (5) 7) Frontier (4) 8) Southwest (7) 9) US Airways (8) 10) American (10) 11) American Eagle (15) 12) SkyWest (9) 13) ExpressJet (new to the ranking this year *) 14) United (12) * In order to qualify for inclusion in the report, an airline must carry at least 1 percent of domestic passengers. |
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Virgin America, headquartered in Burlingame, Calif., did the best job on baggage handling and had the second-lowest rate of passengers denied seats due to overbookings. United Airlines, whose consumer complaint rate nearly doubled last year, had the worst performance. United has merged with Continental Airlines, but has had rough spots in integrating the operations of the two carriers.
The number of complaints consumers filed with the Department of Transportation overall surged by one-fifth last year to 11,445 complaints, up from 9,414 in 2011.
“Over the 20-some-year history we’ve looked at it, this is still the best time of airline performance we’ve ever seen,” said Dean Headley, a business professor at Wichita State University in Kansas, who has co-written the annual report. The best year was 2011, which was only slightly better than last year, he said.
Despite those improvements, it’s not surprising that passengers are getting grumpier, Headley said. Carriers keep shrinking the size of seats in order to stuff more people into planes. And more ticket holders are being turned away because of overbooking. Source: The Associated Press
