For The Second Year-in-a-Row, Delta Maintains the Highest Quality Rating by the ARC 2019 scores and American continues to be Among the Lowest.
The Airline Quality Rating (AQR) is the most comprehensive study of performance and quality of the largest airlines in the United States.
To calculate the rankings for this year's Airline Quality Rating report, researchers at Embry-Riddle looked at four key factors to rank air carriers: On-Time percentage; Denied Boardings; Mishandled Baggage; and Customer Complaints. Each of the categories is also weighted; On-Time performance takes the highest precedence when calculating an airline's score while the volume of customer complaints is the least important factor. The AQR industry score for 2018 performance shows an industry that improved in overall performance quality over the previous year. Six airlines (Delta, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit, and United) showed improvement in AQR scores in 2018. Spirit Airlines had the largest improvement in their AQR score in 2018.
Three airlines (Alaska, American, and Frontier) all had a decline in their 2018 AQR score from the previous year. Frontier Airlines had the largest decline in their AQR score for 2018. Taking all 9 rated airlines together, the AQR score for the industry improved in 2018, and the 2018 score is the best AQR score in the 29-year history of the rating. The industry AQR score has improved each year for the past four years (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018). Improved performance was seen in three of the four areas tracked.
Here are some of the facts:
The industry mishandled baggage rate was better, decreasing from 2.46 per 1,000 passengers in 2017 to 2.43 per 1,000 passengers in 2018.
Involuntary denied boardings by the industry improved to 0.14 per 10,000 passengers in 2018 from 0.34 per 10,000 passengers in 2017.
The consumer complaint rate across the industry declined to 1.04 per 100,000 passengers in 2017 from 1.35 per 100,000 passengers in 2016. Of the 8,865 complaints registered with the DOT regarding all U.S. domestic carriers, 72% were for flight problems, baggage problems, reservation, ticketing and boarding issues, or customer service problems. The 23% decrease in the rate of consumer complaints in 2018 suggests that improved performance in areas important to consumers has been noticed by the flying public.
As an industry, the AQR criteria show that on-time arrival percentage was down (80.2% in 2017 compared to 79.6% in 2018).
Where does your favorite airline rank?
Bottom Line:
This year Delta Air Lines had the best score among all of its peers. The carrier edged out low-cost carrier JetBlue by a narrow margin to take the number one slot after two years in second place behind Alaska Airlines, which dropped to fourth place this year probably reflecting the acquisition of Virgin America. In 2009, Delta was ranked as low as 15th place out of 18 carriers in the study, but over ten years, it has slowly climbed the charts to its current leading position. The carrier also beat its legacy competitors of American and United, which were ranked as 8th and 6th respectively out of 9 carriers surveyed. Only low cost carrier Frontier Airlines was ranked behind American this year which is sad news for the struggling American Airlines.
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