America's Best Airlines 2016

Virgin America retains its crown as America’s best airline for the fourth consecutive year, based on performance data from 2015, amid broad improvements in the airline industry, though it will soon surrender its independence.


Coming alongside the news Monday morning that its board had agreed to accept a $2.6 billion bid from fifth-ranked Alaska Air, this year’s edition of the Airline Quality Rating report found that Virgin had declined in three of the four criteria considered, but still ranked first on the strength of the lowest mishandled baggage rate in the industry, and the third-lowest rate of involuntary denied boardings.

The annual report, compiled by Dr. Brent D. Bowen of the College of Aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Dr. Dean E. Headly of the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University, ranked the 13 major U.S. airlines based on data reported to the U.S. Department of Transportation over the last twelve months, focusing on four criteria: On-time arrivals, denied boardings, mishandled bags, and customer complaints. The final overall ranking is calculated as a weighted average of all four scores. The full dataset can be found on the Airline Quality Rating homepage.

JetBlue ranked second, with the lowest rate of involuntary denied boardings in the business, and a mishandled baggage rate of 1.81 per 1,000 passengers, second best among the 13 airlines.

Most airlines improved their on-time arrival performance over the course of last year, pushing the global bar up from 76.2% of flights on time in 2014 to 79.9% in 2015. United Airlines, reflecting this statistic, recently made operational performance a key targeted area of improvement. The ultra low cost carrier Spirit Airlines posted the worst on-time performance in 2015, 69.0% of flights, and also ranked last overall among the 13 airlines.

(culled from www.forbes.com)