HighSpeedClimb
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Best airlines for today’s busy skies
23,000 readers tell which carriers deliver superior service
Packed planes, stingy service, and rising airfares have propelled the U.S. airline industry back into the black, but many passengers tell us they’re seeing red. You’ll increase your odds of a happy--or at least tolerable--flying experience by choosing one of the airlines that did well in our exclusive survey. You might even save some money.
Two such airlines top our Ratings
: JetBlue Airways, the plucky price fighter based in Queens, N.Y., and Midwest Airlines, the Milwaukee-based carrier that bakes chocolate chip cookies for its passengers in flight.
Some 23,000 readers told us about their experiences on a total of 31,455 U.S. domestic flights in the survey, conducted in early February of this year by the Consumer Reports National Research Center. The survey questions covered such matters as check-in ease, seating comfort, on-time performance, and in-flight service.
Our researchers also conducted a smaller, follow-up survey in April, soon after the highly publicized, weather-related blunders of JetBlue in mid-February and USAirways in March, which left thousands of their passengers stranded and fuming. We found that JetBlue’s blues seem to have had little effect on the airline’s overall levels of satisfaction; it remained among the top-rated carriers in our second survey.
But USAirways, which was already at the bottom of our Ratings
, fell another 10 points in the follow-up survey, to 52 in overall satisfaction. Compounding its weather woes, USAirways has been in a long and messy merger with another low-rated carrier, America West Airlines, since 2005, and difficulties marrying their computer reservation systems this year created weeks of delays and disruptions for many of their customers.
Our survey also asked travelers to assess the independent ticket-booking Web sites they had used, such as Expedia or Orbitz, as well as the airlines’ own sites. Readers reported little difference among these sites. Almost all were rated about average in overall satisfaction, except for three standouts: the sites operated by JetBlue, Midwest, and Southwest.
Among our other findings:
* Smaller and newer airlines often seemed to treat customers better. Indeed, several of our top-rated carriers, including JetBlue (founded in 1999), Midwest (which started out as a corporate air shuttle for Kimberly-Clark executives and took its current name in 2003), and Southwest (a former Texas regional carrier that went national in the 1980s), have made a focus on the consumer an integral part of their business strategy.
Two exceptions to that generalization: AirTran and ATA, both founded in the early 1990s, delivered only average and below-average satisfaction, respectively, in our survey. Continental Airlines, in business since 1934, rated higher than most major carriers.
* The industry as a whole could try a lot harder to please. Compared with other services we cover in our surveys, the airline industry’s average satisfaction score of 72 is worse than that of hotels and rental car companies and better only than such perennials of frustration as wireless carriers, cable TV operators, and computer tech support.
CHOOSE A CARRIER
If JetBlue, Southwest, Frontier, or Hawaiian flies your route, look no further. All four of those airlines provided a superior experience, according to our readers, and at a price that’s often lower than those of their competitors. Midwest also scored high for satisfaction, but its tickets can be pricier. Once you’ve settled on a carrier, you’re not quite done. To boost your odds of a pleasant trip, you’ll still need to do the following:
Pick the right flight. Our readers reported worse on-time performance and lower overall satisfaction on connecting flights, so we’d suggest you aim to fly nonstop whenever that’s possible. Also, instead of automatically booking travel to the familiar big-name airport, consider smaller secondary airfields--Burbank rather than Los Angeles International, for example, or Midway rather than Chicago’s O’Hare. They can have faster check-ins, shorter walks to the gate, and fewer baggage-claim problems.
Take a seat. To avoid unpleasant surprises, try to nail down your seat assignments when you make your reservations. At some online booking sites you can even see which available rows offer the most leg room.
If you’re physically large, have a bit of claustrophobia, or just don’t like having some stranger’s seatback in your face for hours at a time, pay particular attention to the “Seating comfort” column in our Ratings.
JetBlue and Midwest, which earned the highest marks on that dimension, have seats 18 to 21 inches wide, with a 32- to 36-inch pitch (the distance from any point on the seat to the same point on the seat ahead). By contrast, domestic seats on Northwest, which earned the lowest score here, measure just 17 inches wide with a 30- to 32-inch pitch.
Midwest’s Signature Service even eliminates the dreaded middle seat. It configures its planes with two seats on either side of the aisle.
In general, our survey respondents reported that they were more satisfied with business-class or first-class service than with coach. That might seem obvious, except that passengers also tend to bring higher expectations to a higher-cost seat. So if in-flight comfort is paramount, you might want to spring for the extra cost of a business- or first-class ticket or use some of your frequent-flyer miles with that airline to upgrade from coach.
Here's their list
1 JetBlue
2 Midwest
3 Southwest
4 Frontier
5 Hawaiian
6 Aloha
7 Alaska
8 Spirit
9 Continental
10 Airtran
11 Delta
12 American
13 ATA
14 Northwest
15 Eagle
16 United
17 America West
18 US Airways
23,000 readers tell which carriers deliver superior service
Packed planes, stingy service, and rising airfares have propelled the U.S. airline industry back into the black, but many passengers tell us they’re seeing red. You’ll increase your odds of a happy--or at least tolerable--flying experience by choosing one of the airlines that did well in our exclusive survey. You might even save some money.
Two such airlines top our Ratings
: JetBlue Airways, the plucky price fighter based in Queens, N.Y., and Midwest Airlines, the Milwaukee-based carrier that bakes chocolate chip cookies for its passengers in flight.
Some 23,000 readers told us about their experiences on a total of 31,455 U.S. domestic flights in the survey, conducted in early February of this year by the Consumer Reports National Research Center. The survey questions covered such matters as check-in ease, seating comfort, on-time performance, and in-flight service.
Our researchers also conducted a smaller, follow-up survey in April, soon after the highly publicized, weather-related blunders of JetBlue in mid-February and USAirways in March, which left thousands of their passengers stranded and fuming. We found that JetBlue’s blues seem to have had little effect on the airline’s overall levels of satisfaction; it remained among the top-rated carriers in our second survey.
But USAirways, which was already at the bottom of our Ratings
, fell another 10 points in the follow-up survey, to 52 in overall satisfaction. Compounding its weather woes, USAirways has been in a long and messy merger with another low-rated carrier, America West Airlines, since 2005, and difficulties marrying their computer reservation systems this year created weeks of delays and disruptions for many of their customers.
Our survey also asked travelers to assess the independent ticket-booking Web sites they had used, such as Expedia or Orbitz, as well as the airlines’ own sites. Readers reported little difference among these sites. Almost all were rated about average in overall satisfaction, except for three standouts: the sites operated by JetBlue, Midwest, and Southwest.
Among our other findings:
* Smaller and newer airlines often seemed to treat customers better. Indeed, several of our top-rated carriers, including JetBlue (founded in 1999), Midwest (which started out as a corporate air shuttle for Kimberly-Clark executives and took its current name in 2003), and Southwest (a former Texas regional carrier that went national in the 1980s), have made a focus on the consumer an integral part of their business strategy.
Two exceptions to that generalization: AirTran and ATA, both founded in the early 1990s, delivered only average and below-average satisfaction, respectively, in our survey. Continental Airlines, in business since 1934, rated higher than most major carriers.
* The industry as a whole could try a lot harder to please. Compared with other services we cover in our surveys, the airline industry’s average satisfaction score of 72 is worse than that of hotels and rental car companies and better only than such perennials of frustration as wireless carriers, cable TV operators, and computer tech support.
CHOOSE A CARRIER
If JetBlue, Southwest, Frontier, or Hawaiian flies your route, look no further. All four of those airlines provided a superior experience, according to our readers, and at a price that’s often lower than those of their competitors. Midwest also scored high for satisfaction, but its tickets can be pricier. Once you’ve settled on a carrier, you’re not quite done. To boost your odds of a pleasant trip, you’ll still need to do the following:
Pick the right flight. Our readers reported worse on-time performance and lower overall satisfaction on connecting flights, so we’d suggest you aim to fly nonstop whenever that’s possible. Also, instead of automatically booking travel to the familiar big-name airport, consider smaller secondary airfields--Burbank rather than Los Angeles International, for example, or Midway rather than Chicago’s O’Hare. They can have faster check-ins, shorter walks to the gate, and fewer baggage-claim problems.
Take a seat. To avoid unpleasant surprises, try to nail down your seat assignments when you make your reservations. At some online booking sites you can even see which available rows offer the most leg room.
If you’re physically large, have a bit of claustrophobia, or just don’t like having some stranger’s seatback in your face for hours at a time, pay particular attention to the “Seating comfort” column in our Ratings.
JetBlue and Midwest, which earned the highest marks on that dimension, have seats 18 to 21 inches wide, with a 32- to 36-inch pitch (the distance from any point on the seat to the same point on the seat ahead). By contrast, domestic seats on Northwest, which earned the lowest score here, measure just 17 inches wide with a 30- to 32-inch pitch.
Midwest’s Signature Service even eliminates the dreaded middle seat. It configures its planes with two seats on either side of the aisle.
In general, our survey respondents reported that they were more satisfied with business-class or first-class service than with coach. That might seem obvious, except that passengers also tend to bring higher expectations to a higher-cost seat. So if in-flight comfort is paramount, you might want to spring for the extra cost of a business- or first-class ticket or use some of your frequent-flyer miles with that airline to upgrade from coach.
Here's their list
1 JetBlue
2 Midwest
3 Southwest
4 Frontier
5 Hawaiian
6 Aloha
7 Alaska
8 Spirit
9 Continental
10 Airtran
11 Delta
12 American
13 ATA
14 Northwest
15 Eagle
16 United
17 America West
18 US Airways
