WASHINGTON — The authority on travel deals has released its 2018 report on the best and worst U.S. airlines.
And Alaska Airlines has taken top honors for the second year in a row.
“It’s been a significant year for airlines and travel in America and we’re thrilled that Alaska Airlines has, once again, come out on top,” Brian Kelly, founder and CEO of “The Points Guy,” said in a news release.
The Points Guy ranks airlines based on a 10-point scale using weighted criteria based on statistics from public government records and public financial reports from the airlines. These factors include price of airfare and fees for other services, the size of the airlines’ networks, timeliness, passenger complaints and comfort.
“Everything that you could possibly think about that an airline does in its day-to-day operations, we’ve included in this study,” Julian Kheel, senior analyst at The Points Guy, said.
However, Kheel said The Points Guy knows that not all passengers care about the same things when considering air travel. That’s why The Points Guy provides an interactive tool where travelers can weight the criteria themselves.
“When we do our study, we choose to weight certain criteria in a way that we think matters most to customers, but not everyone is going to agree with those ratings,” Kheel said.
“Perhaps to you the frequent flyer program isn’t that important, so you want to push that down to just 5 percent or less, and what’s more important are those on-time arrivals, or not getting bumped. So you can make those adjustments in our interactive tool and you’ll get a different result that really tells you what airline is right for you.”
No. 1: Alaska Airlines
The reason Alaska was rated No. 1 for the second year in a row: It does a lot of things well.
“It actually ranked in the top three in a full half of our criteria,” Kheel said.
That includes airfare, on-time arrivals, baggage handling, customer satisfaction and its frequent flyer program. However, its recent merger with Virgin America could affect those ratings next year.
“Virgin America itself was a pretty good operation, it ranked third in our survey last year, but the real test will come later this year when Virgin ceases to exist and the two airlines are truly one,” Kheel said.
He also said the competition was tight for 2018.
No. 2: Southwest Airlines
Southwest Airlines went up four spots to rank second and lost to Alaska Airlines by less than one point.
The report said Southwest’s improvement in two main categories — lower prices and an increase in network size — made the difference.
No. 3: Delta Air Lines
Delta Air Lines went up by four sports to claim third.
“Alaska Airlines, with Southwest and Delta to follow, are clearly doing it right,” Kelly said.
United Airlines went down two spots after making international headlines for dragging a man off an overbooked flight, but still managed to improve in two categories: reducing the instances of overbooked flights and decreasing passenger complaints.
Hawaiian Airlines came in last place. Kheel attributes this to its limited number of cities served and the cost of its airfare.
The full 2018 report, as well as the 2017 airline rankings, can be found on The Point Guy’s website.
WTOP’s Kristi King contributed to this report.
