Southwest Airlines named best carrier after turbulent year for industry
Southwest Airlines was named the No. 1 carrier in the 2021 Airline Quality Rating, besting the competition in a year that saw a staggering 60% decrease in airline passengers.
Southwest, a Dallas-based carrier that services Wichita, earned the top spot by minimizing customer complaints when would-be fliers were demanding refunds in the early months of the pandemic.
Frontier, which had both the highest customer complaint rate and the highest denied boarding rate, dropped to last place among the country’s 10 biggest airlines.
The annual report, co-authored by Wichita State researcher Dean Headley and Brent Bowen, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, ranks carriers based on four metrics — on-time arrivals, mishandled bags, involuntary denied boardings and customer complaints.
Allegiant Air, last year’s top carrier, came in at No. 2 and had the fewest mishandled bags. Hawaiian Airlines maintained its industry-best on-time arrival rate but fell from second to ninth in the overall rankings due to their high volume of customer complaints.
The impact of COVID-19 on air travel was abrupt and severe. Overall, 295.1 million people flew in 2020, a mere 38.9% of the passengers who boarded flights in 2019.
In January and February 2020, 57.9 million people and 55.2 million people, respectively, boarded domestic airplanes. That number dipped to 31.7 million passengers in March before plummeting to 2.3 million in April.
COVID-19 refund response
At the height of COVID-19 shutdowns and travel restrictions, airline customers began seeking refunds.
“I mean after March, certainly after April, there wasn’t anybody on the airplanes,” Headley said.
“For the most part, those are flights that got booked well in advance, and people were saying, ‘Well, I can’t go anywhere. I want my money.’”
An overwhelming 82.8% of all airline customer complaints in 2020 pertained to refunds, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. That’s up from 6.6% in 2019.
Some airlines were slow to provide refunds to customers who had pre-booked flights. Headley said carriers were reluctant to give back money when passenger demand was already so low.
“They literally got caught with their policies down because they didn’t have the right viewpoint about refunds,” Headley said.
“Their policy machine had to figure this out pretty quick, and some airlines did that better than others.”
Southwest, the largest low-cost carrier in the world, was quicker and more efficient at handling refunds than any other carrier, he said.
Their complaint rate peaked at 106.8 complaints per 100,000 passengers in April. By the end of the year, that was down to 2.6 complaints. Allegiant took second, with an annual rate of 6.3 complaints.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Frontier ended the year with a rate of 49.3 complaints per 100,000 passengers after peaking at 2,129.2 in April. Hawaiian was second worst, with an annual rate of 37.6 complaints.
Excluding customer complaints, which saw an elevenfold increase from 2019, the industry average in all other metrics improved. More flights landed on-time. Fewer passengers were denied boarding and fewer bags were mishandled, which Headley attributed to the lower volume of passengers.
“If the pressure is taken off the system, it performs better. They’re good at what they do,” he said.
Hawaiian took top marks for on-time flight rate with 88.0% of flights arriving on time. Spirit Airlines, Southwest and Delta Airlines all turned in rates between 86 and 87%.
Allegiant had an industry-worst 71.3% on-time rate, and JetBlue Airways was ninth with 82.1%.
Allegiant, Delta, Hawaiian and JetBlue shared a pristine 0.0% involuntary denied boarding rate per 10,000 passengers. Frontier’s 0.24% denied boarding rate and American’s 0.20% brought up the rear.
Allegiant mishandled fewer bags than any other carrier — 1.5 bags per 1,000 — followed by Southwest at 2.7. American mishandled the most bags, at a rate of 6.4 per 1,000. United Airlines was ninth with 4.6.
Airlines on the rebound
With the world cautiously reemerging from COVID-19, Headley said the airline industry is poised to bounce back from its pandemic year.
“They’re planning on this coming back big-time,” Headley said. “It’s just a matter of how long it’s going to take to get the schedule, the planes, the people to do all of this, because you know, they laid off what, 300,000 people? Baggage handlers, staff — it takes a while to get that engine back up to speed.”
The International Air Transport Association warns that air travel likely won’t reach pre-pandemic levels until 2024.
Headley estimated that airlines are currently operating at roughly 60 or 65% capacity. But he expects carriers to report relatively strong Q1 financials.
That’s because leisure travelers who have been cooped up for a year are eager to vacation — “someplace warm or interesting,” Headley said.
But he said the long-term outlook for business travel remains uncertain.
“It will come back to some extent, but I don’t think it’ll come back the way it was,” Headley said.
Airlines “are trying to ride this leisure demand revenue stream, because they know that business, they’ve learned some pretty good lessons. I mean, let’s face it — Zoom and some of this other stuff works pretty good. And maybe you don’t have to have that person to person.”
He said one of the next major tests for airlines as demand increases will be their handling of passengers who want to travel without being vaccinated or wearing a mask to protect against the virus.
Here’s the full 2020 Airline Quality Rating ranking:
- Southwest
- Allegiant
- Delta
- Alaska
- Spirit
- JetBlue
- American
- United
- Hawaiian
- Frontier