Allegiant tops annual Airline Quality Rating report as COVID-19 threatens industry

Allegiant Air, a low-cost airline company based in Las Vegas that services Wichita, was named the No. 1 airline in the 2020 Airline Quality Rating as the airline industry grapples with the coronavirus pandemic.

It was Allegiant’s first year to be included in the annual ranking, and its high marks in baggage handling propelled the company into the top spot. Allegiant offers flights from Wichita to Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Daytona Beach and Destin, Florida.

American Airlines, which bumped the most passengers and had the worst baggage handling rate, dropped to last place among the country’s 10 biggest airlines.

Overall, the airlines industry declined slightly in all key performance measures, snapping a five-year streak of improvement.

On average last year in the United States, fewer planes landed on time, more passengers got bumped, more bags were mishandled and customer complaints increased, based on a ranking of the country’s 10 largest airlines.

The declines in performance ratings were slight, but signal the first drop since 2014.

The annual report is authored by Wichita State researcher Dean Headley and Brent Bowen, an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University professor. It ranks large airlines based on mishandled bags, involuntary denied boardings, customer complaints and on-time arrivals.

When it comes to bumping passengers, Delta, Hawaiian, JetBlue and United were industry leaders, with denied boarding rates between 0 and 0.1 per 10,000 passengers, all above the industry average of 0.19. American bumped 0.57 passengers per 10,000.

For baggage mishandling, Allegiant had by-far the fewest with 1.75 per 1,000 checked bags, while American had 8.6. Frontier came in second place (4.2) and United Airlines placed second to last (6.68).

Hawaiian Airlines was the best at on-time arrival with 88.3% of their flights landing on time and Frontier (73.1%) came in last place. Second place belonged to Delta (85.2%) and second to last was JetBlue (73.5%).

The most customer complaints were lobbed against Spirit Airlines with 2.85 per 100,000 passengers, while Southwest (0.33) had the fewest. Delta (0.51), Alaska Air (0.60) and JetBlue (0.96) each had fewer than 1 complaint per 100,000 passengers.

Headley said it’s likely Allegiant’s baggage handling score helped put it over the top.

“Those are always the airlines that seem to do well in the overall ratings,” he said. “And the airlines that don’t do particularly well with that particular customer outcome don’t do as well in the overall numbers.”

Headley and Bowen compiled numbers from the U.S. Department of Transportation to complete their report, which is the gold standard statistical study of major airline performance in the nation.

“Complaints and denied boardings and bags and on-time are the things that people are probably going to notice the most,” Headley said. “If you do better, you get a better number. If you do worse, you get a worse number.”

Airlines in trouble

The latest findings come as the bottom is dropping out of the U.S. air-travel industry.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, nine out of 10 seats on U.S. airplanes sit empty. Airlines have canceled orders for new planes and permanently parked some in their fleet as demand has plunged.

Headley compares what is happening now to air travel after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when the industry took until 2004 to fully rebound.

“This is different than 9/11 — worse by far (for the airlines industry),” Headley said. “The impact of shutdown in the industry is by far going to be deeper and last longer.”

Air travel during and after the coronavirus outbreak will be a harder sell than after the terrorist attacks because people felt like they could identify a terrorist by sight, he said.

With COVID-19, everything is different.

“It’s faceless,” he said. “You don’t know you’ve been infected until it’s too late, days or weeks later.”

He said air travel will change as airlines come up with new ways of doing things that make passengers feel safe. After 9/11, the Transportation Security Administration ramped up airport security. Some sort of airport coronavirus screening could be one solution, Headley said.

Airlines have already begun taking measures to make passengers feel safer. JetBlue this week announced that all passengers must wear face coverings, such as cloth and surgical masks, on its flights starting this week. Following its lead, American, Delta, Frontier and United said they will soon require face coverings.

Even with the additional safety measures, air travel business is likely changed forever as people’s behavior changes during the coronavirus, Headley said.

For example, a large percentage of airline business in the United States is business-related trips. Since the coronavirus has limited travel, companies have been forced to adapt, holding meetings on digital platforms such as Zoom, Facebook and Skype, Headley said.

Because that’s cheaper than flying, it might just stick, he said.

“Businesses are going to figure out, well, that’s OK. You don’t have to fly as much,” he said. “Once you find that there is a reasonable alternative that’s cheaper and gets the same or very similar results, people tend to do that. Because, let’s face it, the cost of flying is what most people worry about.”

Other types of travel will ultimately rebound at some point, he guessed, but it’s entirely unclear when.

“This country is a group of wanderers,” Headley said. “We love to go places and do things. So that’s not going to change. It’s just going to be pent-up for a while. And how quickly that breaks loose is anyone’s guess.”

Airline hits hurt Wichita

The bleak long-term outlook for airlines doesn’t bode well for Wichita, whose economy relies heavily on selling planes to those airlines.

Wichita’s economy is in imminent danger as two dramatic events have converged on the Air Capital of the World.

First, the Boeing 737 Max crisis. Then the pandemic that has led to 9 out of every 10 seats on U.S. planes empty.

Even before the coronavirus hit Wichita, Kansas lost approximately 5,000 aerospace jobs because of the Boeing 737 Max suspension. Wichita’s metropolitan economy had been marked as the “most exposed” by Wells Fargo Securities Economic Group due to the 737 Max grounding.

The Boeing plane has been grounded worldwide since March, 2019, after two crashes overseas killed 346 people. Regulators and Boeing have been going back and forth over deficiencies in the plane for months, and it’s remains unclear when it will be re-certified.

On Friday, Spirit AeroSystems, previously the city’s largest employer, announced more than 1,400 layoffs as a result of a decline in demand spurred in part by difficulties getting the MAX re-certified and in part because fewer people are flying.

Those layoffs are on top of 2,800 at Spirit in January and February.

People without a reliable source of income don’t tend to fly as much, Headley said.

“In Wichita, (the airlines industry) is a little more troublesome,” he said. “If people aren’t going back to work like everybody else (in other cities), what does that mean for air travel here?”

Besides the jobs, Wichita stands to lose flights to other cities. Dwight D. Eisenhower Airport is a “spoke” airport, meaning not a major center for connecting flights.

“For markets like Wichita, we’re not a small spoke but we are a spoke, and the hub operations — Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, places like that — are going to survive first. And spokes will begin (to lose flights),” he said.

He said airlines will likely have to drop the number of flights in and out of Wichita to shore up expenses.

“Generally speaking, the flying public will want to fly. The airlines certainly want them to come back. They’re probably going to survive — airlines as they are now — are probably going to survive for at least the next several months, maybe a year or longer.

“But at some point, some of the airlines are going to say, ‘Either we cut back or we quit.’ They can’t really stand too much more consolidation,” he said.

Here’s the full 2020 Airline Quality Rating ranking:

1. Allegiant; 2. Hawaiian; 3. Southwest; 4. Delta; 5. Alaska; 6. JetBlue; 7. Frontier; 8. Spirit; 9. United; 10. American.

This story was originally published May 4, 2020 at 5:00 AM.