Virgin America scores #1 on Airline Quality Rating
Virgin America and Delta are celebrating their scores in the 2013 Airline Quality Rating report released this morning.
Virgin America, in its first year of being included, was ranked the best airline to fly. Next came traditional top performers JetBlue and AirTran (which has been acquired by Southwest).
Also interesting was the rating for Delta Airlines, moving up from sixth to fourth place, the best showing of the major airlines. Delta beat out Southwest for the second year in a row.
American, American Eagle, and United continued to score at the bottom of the list.
Bumping travelers, filling middle seats, and losing luggage are more common than ever, the report says, and traveler complaints are up 20%. Customer complaints per 100,000 passengers increased from 1.19 in 2011 to 1.43 in 2012, according to the study, a joint project by Wichita State and Purdue universities.
Hawaiian had the best on-time performance last year, at 93.4%, while American had the worst, at 76.9%.
Here’s the list, in order:
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 (not rated in 2011)
14. United (12)
By Cheryl Rosen
Cheryl
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