The Best and Worst US Airlines 2013 Rankings

The Airline Quality Report released the data for the 2012 rankings of the airline industry. The report “showed an industry that declined in overall performance quality over the previous year,” calling performance “slightly worse” than 2011. The rating is conducted annually by researchers at the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University and the Department of Aviation Technology at Purdue University.

Of all domestic airlines, United Airlines fared worst overall. This is the first year that data for United and Continental have been presented together. The two airlines merged in 2010. American Eagle had the largest improvement in AQR score of any airline rated for 2012.

Best and Worst Airlines in Each Category:

On-Time Performance:

Best: Hawaiian Air came out of top with an on-time performance rate of 93.4 percent.

Worst: American Airlines was the worst when it came to on-time performance at 76.9 percent.

Involuntary Denied Boarding:

Best: JetBlue. Just 0.01 per 10,000 passengers in 2012 were denied boarding. This was consistent with denied boarding in 2011.

Worst: SkyWest Airlines: 2.32 per 10,000 passengers in 2012, a dramatic increase compared to 2011, when the rate was 0.68.

Mishandled Bags:

Best: Virgin America had a mishandled baggage rate of 0.87 per 1,000 passengers.

Worst: American Eagle mishandled bags at a rate 7.32 per 1,000 passengers.

Customer Complaints:

Best: Southwest Airlines had a customer complaint rate of 0.25 per 100,000 passengers in 2012. The report noted “Southwest Airlines is consistently the airline with the lowest customer complaint rate in the industry.”

Worst: United had an average of 4.24 per 100,000 passengers.