Fewer on-time flights: Airline performance dipped in 2021. Here’s how carriers did

Southwest Airlines has been named the No. 1 carrier in the Airline Quality Rating for the second straight year as more passengers returned to the skies and overall airline performance lagged in 2021.

Southwest, a Dallas-based carrier that serves Wichita, earned top honors largely by having the lowest complaint rate — 1.59 complaints per 100,000 passengers.

Hawaiian Airlines, which had the highest rate of on-time arrivals, claimed the No. 2 overall ranking among the country’s 10 largest carriers after slotting in at No. 9 last year.

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 mishandled the fewest bags of any major carrier, followed by Hawaiian.

Allegiant, Delta, Hawaiian and United all delivered 0.00 annual rates of involuntary denied boardings.

The International Air Transport Association doesn’t expect a full recovery to pre-COVID flight rates until 2024, but domestic travel began to stabilize in 2021 after lockdowns and travel restrictions severely limited travel in 2020. Overall, 540 million passengers flew in 2021, compared to 295 million in 2020.

The traffic increase didn’t bode well for airline performance across the industry, as fewer planes arrived on time, more bags were mishandled and more passengers with booked tickets were bumped from their flights, the report found.

“Within the industry, there is a lot of talk about the airlines being back from the pandemic, but performance was worse in three of the four major indicators,” Headley said. “We have the history to show that as passenger volume rises, so do performance problems. It could take another two or three years for airlines to address these issues.”

Headley ascribed the poor performance largely to staffing issues.

“Airlines want to hire people but they have not been able to do it quickly,” Headley said. “The pandemic forced airlines to lay off pilots as well as baggage handlers and gate agents. Many of those folks took other jobs and they aren’t coming back.”

Here’s the full 2021 Airline Quality Rating ranking:

1. Southwest

2. Hawaiian

3. Delta

4. Allegiant

5. Alaska

6. United

7. Frontier

8. JetBlue

9. American

10. Spirit

This story was originally published May 11, 2022 at 11:33 AM.