If you're wondering about which airline to choose to book your next flight, The Wall Street Journal has a list you may want to see.
For the third year in a row, Atlanta’s Delta Air Lines landed in the top spot of the best airlines in the US. It was followed by Alaska and Southwest Airlines tying for second place. Low-cost carrier Allegiant Air and ultra-low cost carrier Spirit Airlines rounded out the top 5. Meanwhile, American Airlines came in last. It’s the third year since 2015 that the Fort Worth, Texas airline ranked in the position.
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The categories Delta ranked no. 1 in are on-time arrivals, cancelled flights and involuntary bumping from flights as well as being the top overall airline.
The WSJ report says Delta had an average of 36 canceled flights a day in 2019. By comparison, American had more than four times the cancellations with 159 a day last year.
Each day, Delta had an average of 1,345 late or lost bags. Meanwhile, American had upwards of 2,600 lost or late pieces of luggage. Last year also saw only nine passengers bumped from Delta flights. Those flying on American saw over 15,000 passengers bumped from the aircraft.
And with higher instances of severe weather and travel increasing at high rates last year — especially over the holiday season — Delta still managed to improve its average on-time arrivals. The report cites Global Eagle's data analytics unit masFlight when noting that Delta went from an 82.9% arrival rate in 2018 to 83.4% in 2019.
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“While the weather itself is out of our control, how we react to that weather, plan for that weather and work through that weather is certainly within our control,” Dave Holtz, Delta’s senior vice president over the airline’s operations center, told WSJ.
Delta also saw improvements in its cancellation rates. In 2018, the airline and its regional partners cancelled 0.9% of its flights, but last year that decreased to 0.7%. American and second-to-last place United Airlines cancelled 2% of their flights in 2019.
Delta also fared well in the complains category, ranking at no. 3. The top spot in that area, however, went to Southwest Airlines. Southwest also fared the best in the 2-hour tarmac delays category and Delta ranked no. 6.
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Rankings of major airlines from best to worst (overall):
1. Delta Air Lines
2. Alaska Airlines (tie)
2. Southwest Airlines (tie)
4. Allegiant Air
5. Spirit Airlines
6. JetBlue
7. Frontier Airlines
8. United Airlines
9. American Airlines
View the full report here.
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