What's the best airline in the United States? Virgin America, according to the Airline Quality Rating.
Virgin American was named the best airline for the second year in a row in the annual airline rating report. The report also showed that the U.S. had the best-ever performance in 2013. The ratings of U.S. airlines have been conducted by aviation and marketing professors since 1991. The results are formed by taking multiple factors into considerations. The factor that weighs the most in the stats includes on-time performance, followed by denied boardings, mishandled baggage and customer complaints, CNN reports.
The data comes from the U.S. Department of Transportation's monthly Air Travel Consumer Report. Virgin America received the top score overall but it's score dipped slightly from 2012 due to a slight drop in on-time performance. However Virgin had the best record for baggage handling in 2013 out of all of the airlines.
The airline industry as a whole saw an improvement from 2012 to 2013 even though there were slight declines in two of the four areas that are factored in.
"I think generally speaking for the last several years we've been in a pretty good place from a performance standpoint," study co-author Dean Headley, an associate professor of marketing at Wichita State University said accordinf to CNN. Headley conducts the study along with Brent Bowen, a professor and dean at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
"As an industry we're in a good spot. People seem to be flying. Price isn't scaring them away, which seems to be what people look at most," Headley said. What doesn't always match up with performance is consumer perception of air travel, he said. The ratings don't assess airfares.
One of the factors that dropped overall was on-time performance. On-time arrivals were at 81.8 percent in 2012 but dropped to 78.4 percent in 2013. The amount of mishandled baggage also increased.
Best on-time performance went to Hawaiian Airlines at 93.3 percent while American Eagle had the worst at 72.1 percent. Denied boardings and customer complaints improved overall in the airline industry. The lowest customer complaint rate went to Southwest Airlines.
These are the best airlines in the U.S. according to the ratings:
1. Virgin America
2. JetBlue
3. Hawaiian
4. Delta
5. Alaska
6. Endeavor Air
7. US Airways
8. Southwest
9. American
10. AirTran
11. Frontier
12. United
13. ExpressJet
14. SkyWest
15. American Eagle
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
