WASHINGTON — Virgin America was named the top U.S. airline for the third consecutive year in the annual Airline Quality Rating (AQR) report.
Hawaiian Airlines finished No. 2 and was followed by Delta. Each of those carriers jumped one spot from 2013, dropping previous No. 2 JetBlue into fourth-place. Alaska Airlines rounded out the top five, maintaining its No. 5 ranking from 2013.
Overall, the industry’s performance as evaluated by the AQR declined from 2013, which was the “best-ever year in overall performance.” The AQR study notes that “only three of 12 U.S. airlines evaluated actually improved this past year (2014). And while one held steady, eight airlines declined.”
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The study, now it’s 25th year, analyzed the performance of U.S. carriers for the full-year 2014. The study is a joint project of Wichita State and the Arizona campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. The report’s authors bill the rating’s as “the nation’s longest running study of airline performance quality.”
The study uses four “core elements” to determine its ratings, looking at on-time performance, involuntary denied boardings, mishandled baggage and customer complaints.
The ratings report tied the weaker overall performance to the recent round of mergers, suggesting “airlines still have work to do to compete for customer loyalty.”
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“Bigger isn’t always better, and the downturn in performance suggests that customer perceptions of poor outcomes are warranted,” Dean Headley, associate professor of marketing at Wichita State’s W. Frank Barton School of Business, said in the report.
The rankings included 12 airlines that carry at least 1% of passengers nationwide. This is down from 15 airlines last year because of mergers and consolidations. Four of U.S. airlines now carry 70% of the nation’s passenger traffic.
Only three airlines improved their service in 2014 – Virgin, Hawaiian and Alaska – while SkyWest held steady and the other eight lost ground.
“We’re going downhill again,” Headley said, after a rebound in recent years from a low-water mark in 2007.
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While Virgin’s on-time rate suffered a bit in 2014, the airline does very well in the other three categories charting mishandled bags, denied boarding and customer complaints, the report said. Virgin denies boarding only 0.09 times per 10,000 passengers, compared to the industry average of 1 per 10,000, which Headley said was “extremely low.”
“They let people on the airplane – they don’t mess around,” Headley said. “That generates a very good baggage handling rate. It’s very low – one of the lowest in the industry. And they don’t have that many complaints.”
Delta was the only large carrier among the top four. The experts said Delta has improved since its 2010 merger with Northwest. However, United has struggled with customer service since its 2010 merger with Continental. Southwest finished folding AirTran into its own brand late last year while American is just now integrating with its merger partner US Airways.
“The big difference is management of the airline really demanding the customer service,” added study co-researcher Brent Bowen, dean of College of Aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Prescott. “Performance by the airlines is slipping while they claimed this would make them better.”
The experts said these service-related factors had nothing to do with airline safety.
“We have a very safe air-transportation system in the United States, and safety is actually improving,” Bowen said. “The sad part is that service is declining. The airlines are investing their money in making it a self-service experience.”
The overall rankings of the 12 airlines include in the 2014 AQR study are (last year’s ranking in parenthesis):
1. Virgin America (1)
2. Hawaiian (3)
3. Delta (4)
4. JetBlue (2)
5. Alaska (5)
6. Southwest, includes merger partner AirTran (8)
7. American, includes US Airways (9)
8. Frontier (11)
9. United (12)
10. SkyWest (14)
11. ExpressJet (13)
12. Envoy/ American Eagle (15)
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