It’s been another headline-making year in aviation, with airlines having passengers arrested, Boeing facing a major crisis after multiple crashes, a budget carrier stranding passengers after going out of business and pets dying on planes. With all eyes on the airlines, the personal-finance website Wallethub has just announced its fourth annual list of the best and worst airlines in America. In addition to comparing 12 U.S. carriers (including the nine largest airlines plus three regional ones), Wallethub also revealed the most reliable airline, the most comfortable airline, the best airline for pets, the least-complained-about airline and the safest airline. Compare this to 2018′s best and worst airlines, which ranked the airlines based on a similar report.
For its 2019 list, Wallethub collected and analyzed 2018 flight data from the U.S. Department of Transportation and compiled the list using a strategic methodology that compared 15 key metrics across four major categories, including baggage, departures and complaints; animal incidents; in-flight comfort and cost; and safety.
“It’s easy to rank airlines by cost. But we ranked the best airlines in terms of overall service quality and functional performance,” says Wallethub analyst Jill Gonzalez. “We also shared our findings with the airlines prior to publishing them, to make sure all information collected was accurate.”
Some airlines such as Allegiant or Sun Country were not included on the list because of their size, according to Gonzalez. “We evaluated the nine largest national airlines and three regional carriers that report to the Department of Transportation because they have at least 1% of total domestic scheduled service passenger revenues,” says Gonzalez. “Any airline with less of a share typically won’t have the same incident and accident report data, which would lead to data limitations and an incomplete ranking.”