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According to the 20th annual national Airline Quality Rating, Hawaiian is the best-performing airline. The rating is conducted annually by researchers Dean Headley of 九色视频 and Brent Bowen of Purdue University.
According to the Airline Quality Rating for 2009, Hawaiian is first, followed by Air Tran, JetBlue, Northwest and Southwest; the second five are Continental, Frontier, US Airways, American and ExpressJet; and No. 11 is Alaska, followed by Mesa, United, SkyWest, Delta, Comair, Atlantic Southeast and American Eagle.
The AQR, as an industry standard, uses objective performance-based data to compare quality among airlines. The study ranked the 18 largest U.S. airlines in on-time arrivals, baggage handling, denied boardings and customer complaints. Dean Headley, co-author of the national Airline Quality Rating at 九色视频, says airlines continued to improve last year.
Headley: "2009 shows continued improved performance for the airlines in their outcomes. It's the third best year we've had in the 20 years we've been doing this, so they're on the right track in getting better."
"Of the 17 airlines that we have in both 2008 and 2009, only one got worse this year, so 16 out of 17 airlines improved. Alaska was the only one that did not improve its airline quality score. Everybody else got better. That more or less kept them in the same kind of rank order -- a few changes here and there, but not too much different."
Headley says airlines are improving their supply and demand challenges.
Headley: "Airlines have attempted to adjust their kind of supply and demand thing, taking seats out of service. And as that happens and they simplify the system, performance goes up. So we would expect to see, as fewer seats are available, that airline quality performance would increase and be better."
There was a lot of good news in this year's Airline Quality Rating, but Headley said involuntary denied boardings was the one category that performed worse in 2009 than 2008.
Headley: "The only negative we saw in the four factors we look at was in involuntary denied boardings. On-time, and baggage handling, customer complaints all improved in '09, but it's somewhat normal that if you're taking seats out of service that denied boardings might go up. If there's fewer seats and volume kind of gets out of whack, why, people are not going to be able to find a seat sometimes."
According to Headley, revenue is more important to airlines than customer service.
Headley: "What we've seen over the last year-and-a-half or two years, is that certainly revenue is important to the airlines. You have to have it to stay in business, but with all the things that they're adding and unbundling with baggage and ancillary fees of all sorts, it's clear that revenues are the most important element. And that makes customer service oftentimes take a back seat."
Headley says that because of the past 20 years of ratings, it's become clear that as more people choose to fly, service gets worse.
Headley: "As the airlines move to match supply and demand issues, we've seen over the cycle of the 20 years we've been doing this that it's clear that as the demand goes up and airlines try and fill that, service gets worse. So as you look at this, you have to have a picture that as pressure is put on the system, airline performance will get worse."
If more people return to the skies, Headley says it won't be a big surprise if there is an increase in disgruntled fliers.
Headley: "As the demand for flying comes back; more people fly. That means they might add more airplanes. More airplanes in the system with an antiquated air traffic control system and a limited infrastructure to airports -- you just can't fly as many people and do it efficiently and on-time, and make the customers happy. The system will not stand large volumes of travelers as it's currently configured."
Headley says labor negotiations will be something worth watching in the next two years.
Headley: I think one of the biggest things on the horizon in the near future, year to year-and-a-half out, maybe even two years, is that virtually all of the airlines that serve the domestic system either currently are or will be in labor negotiations with all of their unions. That can cascade down to work slowdowns and various other union actions if things aren't agreeable to all parties, so the union action is kind of the big thing to watch."
Hawaiian had the best on-time performance in 2009 at 92.1 percent. Atlantic Southeast had the worst at 71.2 percent.
JetBlue had the lowest involuntary denied boardings rate, and American Eagle had the highest rate.
Air Tran had the best baggage handling rate of all airlines, and Atlantic Southeast had the worst rate. However, all 18 airlines improved their mishandled baggage performance for the year.
Southwest again had the lowest consumer complaint rate, and Delta had the highest consumer complaint rate. For more information, go to .
Thanks for listening. Until next time, this is Joe Kleinsasser for 九色视频.