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2015 Airline Quality Rating Survey Released

Thomas Hawk, flickr Creative Commons

Results from the 25th annual Airline Quality Rating survey were released Monday. Of the 12 best performing airlines in the U.S., overall airline performance declined in the four areas tracked.

Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance last year and Envoy Air, formerly American Eagle, the worst.

Dean Headley, a Wichita State University marketing professor and co-author of the study, says just over 75 percent of the airlines were on time.

"But if you’re in the 25 percent, you’re not on time, and they’re losing more bags than they have in years past and we’re paying for it," Headley says. "It’s not unusual that the people would be having a kind of a dis-ease about the way the airlines are performing."

Only five of the 12 airlines included in the survey had improved mishandled baggage rates last year. Frontier ranked highest in customer complaints while Southwest Airlines routinely ranked lowest in customer complaints. Alaska Airlines was ranked the lowest in 2014.

Below is the 2014 numerical ranking of the nation’s leading 12 airlines, according to the Airline Quality Rating, with the 2013 ranking in parentheses:

  1. Virgin America (1)
  2. Hawaiian (3)
  3. Delta (4)
  4. JetBlue (2)
  5. Alaska (5)
  6. Southwest (8) (includes AirTran)
  7. American (9) (includes USAirways)
  8. Frontier (11)
  9. United (12) (includes Continental)
  10. SkyWest (14)
  11. ExpressJet (13)
  12. Envoy/ American Eagle (15)

Facts and Figures:

  • Industry performance declined in all four of the areas tracked.
  • Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance (91.9%) for 2014.
  • Envoy/American Eagle had the worst on-time performance (68.8%) for 2014.
  • Only two airlines improved their on-time arrival performance in 2014 (Frontier and JetBlue). Four of the 12 airlines rated had an on-time arrival percentage over 80%. On-time for 2014 by the industry was 76.2% compared to 78.4% in 2013.
  • ExpressJet and SkyWest had the highest involuntary denied boardings rate at 2.71 per 10,000 passengers.
  • Virgin America had the lowest involuntary denied boardings rate at 0.09 per 10,000 passengers.
  • Only two airlines improved their denied boardings rate in 2014. Delta recorded the largest improvement and Envoy had the largest decline. Virgin America (0.09) and JetBlue (0.22) are clearly the industry leaders in avoiding denied boarding incidents. Industry performance was worse in 2014 (0.92 per 10,000 passengers) than it was in 2013 (0.89).
  • Virgin America had the best baggage handling rate (0.95 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers) of all airlines.
  • Envoy/American Eagle had the worst baggage handling rate (9.02 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers) of all airlines.
  • Only five airlines had improved mishandled baggage rates in 2014. The mishandled baggage rate for the industry increased from 3.21 per 1,000 passengers in 2013 to 3.62 in 2014.
  • Alaska had the lowest consumer complaint rate (0.42 per 100,000 passengers) of all airlines.
  • Frontier had the highest consumer complaint rate (3.91 per 100,000 passengers) of all airlines rated.
  • Customer complaints per 100,000 passengers increased from 1.13 in 2013 to 1.38 in 2014. Four of 12 airlines improved their customer complaint rates for 2014. The majority of complaints (74.0%) to D.O.T. were for Flight Problems (37.8%), Bagg.

Click here for the complete report: http://www.wichita.edu/thisis/stories/story.asp?si=2802

Carla Eckels is Director of Organizational Culture at KMUW. She produces and hosts the R&B and gospel show Soulsations and brings stories of race and culture to The Range with the monthly segment In the Mix. Carla was inducted into The Kansas African American Museum's Trailblazers Hall of Fame in 2020 for her work in broadcast/journalism.