Alaska Airlines has emerged as the best US airline in a new study; only regional airline SkyWest comes close to its overall quality.
WalletHub, which published the study, vouches for Alaska Airlines’ punctuality and even its safety, despite the infamous incident on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 bound for Ontario, where a door panel exploded mid-flight at 16,000 feet.
All 171 passengers and six crew members survived after an emergency landing in Portland, Oregon, but that didn’t stop three passengers on that flight from filing a $1 billion lawsuit against Alaska Airlines and Boeing, the company that made the plane. 737 Max 9 airplane. .
The next best domestic airline was Spirit, which unsurprisingly ranked as the top choice for budget travelers, with no other airline coming close to rivaling it.
Spirit is for people who don’t care about legroom and are content with the only inflight entertainment being a phone or a book.
WalletHub Ranked Alaska Airlines Best US Airlines Despite Recent Safety Risks
A door plug exploded midair on an Alaska Airlines flight on January 5, 2024 in Portland, Oregon.
An Alaska SkyWest Embraer E175LR aircraft approaches San Diego International Airport to land on a flight from San Francisco on March 12, 2024.
An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 awaits inspection in the airline’s hangar at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport
More surprisingly, Spirit was considered the safest airline, and second, ironically, was Alaska Airlines.
Delta and JetBlue ranked fourth and sixth on the list, respectively, and led the pack when it came to inflight entertainment, Wi-Fi offerings, legroom, and complimentary snacks and drinks.
And Delta, despite coming in fourth, was considered the most trustworthy airline by WalletHub, having “the lowest rate of cancellations, delays, mishandled baggage and denied boardings.”
United Airlines emerged as a solid middle option, slightly edging out JetBlue.
Rounding out the bottom of the list were Hawaiian Airlines, American Airlines, Frontier Airlines and Southwest Airlines.
Hawaiian Airlines has had its fair share of setbacks, which affected its score.
At least 20 people, including children, were injured during severe turbulence on a Hawaiian flight to Arizona in December 2022. Many were thrown from their seats and some were left unconscious.
A Spirit Airlines Airbus A319 landing on February 19, 2016 in Los Angeles
American Airlines ranked eighth among ten national and regional airlines studied by WalletHub
Still, Hawaiian is one airline that is unlikely to deny boarding to passengers.
Frontier, which came in ninth, is the other budget airline on the list. Given its overwhelming tendency to deny boarding, delay flights, and cancel flights all together, Spirit appears to be the king of cheap air travel.
And after JetBlue ended its $3.8 billion merger with Spirit in March 2024 after running into tough antitrust restrictions, airports are likely to be full of yellow-skinned planes for the foreseeable future.
Ultimately, Southwest Airlines came in last place, a surprising fall from grace after ranked second after Delta in 2023.
Southwest was among the worst when it came to mishandled baggage, but its safety score was what brought the airline down.
WalletHub looked at aviation deaths and injuries between 2018 and 2023 for this study, and Southwest had two flights, one in 2018 and one in 2020, that resulted in deaths.
A Southwest Airlines plane taxis from a gate at Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on October 11, 2021
An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 airliner leaves the terminal at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on March 25, 2024.
In 2018, a Southwest flight departing from New York made an emergency landing in Philadelphia after debris from the plane shattered a window, pushing a passenger partially into the air at 32,500 feet.
Jennifer Riordan, 43, a mother of two and a banking executive, was the one who was sucked out the window. She died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head, neck and torso.
Then in 2020, a Southwest plane landing at an airport in Austin, Texas, crashed into a person on the runway, killing them.
While Southwest’s punctuality is typically decent, passengers eager to get home for the holidays in December 2022 faced massive delays across countries. In some cases, people were stranded for days or had to make excruciatingly long car trips to reach their families.
Southwest agreed to pay a $140 million fine for the 2022 Christmas crash.