Despite controversies, US airline performance improved in 2017

After a turbulent year of controversies, animal deaths, and viral videos of passenger mistreatment, an in-depth study of airline quality found that major airlines performed better in 2017 than they had in nearly 30 years in the areas of on-time performance, baggage handling, involuntary denied boardings, and customer complaints.

The findings, announced Monday, came on the one-year anniversary of the involuntary removal of David Dao from a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Louisville. Cellphone footage of Dao being dragged from the flight set off months of passenger outrage and a seemingly endless series of videos showing additional fights on planes.

But data from the annual Airline Quality Rating study by the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University concluded that in 2017, the airline industry performed better than it has since the study began in 1991.

“This is the best year ever in the 28 years that we’ve done this,” said Dean Headley, associate professor of marketing at the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University. “Last year was the best year ever, and now we have a new best year ever. That’s good. It’s going in the right direction.”

This year, Alaska Airlines ranked at the top of the survey, trailed very closely by Delta Air Lines. The competition for the top spot was so close that the difference between the two airlines was .005 of a point based on the survey’s scoring criteria.

The much maligned United came in at number eight of the 12 airlines analyzed. The consistently low-scoring Spirit airlines placed last in the survey.

Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance at 88.2 out of 100 percent. Virgin America, which was purchased by Alaska Air, had the worst, at 70 percent.

Involuntary denied boarding, the term used when airlines oversell a flight and look for passengers to take later flights, improved among nearly all the major airlines. Delta had the strongest record on involuntary denied boarding, with Spirit Airlines ranking last.

“Involuntary boarding is probably what changed the ranking process the most,” Headley said at a press conference Monday morning. “United is, interestingly, the most improved airline in that area. They should be. The industry, overall, dropped that rate by nearly 50 percent. So they made a major change. The problem, in my view, is that they only make a change when they know they have to. I wish they could do that a little more proactively.”

Despite its overall abysmal ratings, Spirit had the best baggage handling rate (1.61 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers), while ExpressJet had the worst. Overall, the industry had its lowest rate of mishandled bags in 2017 (2.46 per 1,000 passengers) since the study began. However, this could be the result of fewer passengers checking bags because of luggage fees.

The data for the study, which is culled from the US Department of Transportation, saw a decrease in customer complaints from 2016 to 2017. Southwest had the lowest number of customer complaints (0.47 per 100,000 passengers), while Spirit logged the largest number of complaints (5.59 per 100,000 passengers).