Delta Air Lines earned the top spot in the Wall Street Journal’s 2017 Airline Scorecard, finishing as the best airline for on-time arrivals and for minimizing involuntary passenger bumping.
The scorecard evaluated carriers across several operational and customer-service metrics, including canceled flights, extreme delays, tarmac delays of two hours or more, mishandled baggage and customer complaints.
Despite notable disruptions during the year — including a spring-break crew-scheduling problem and a major power outage at its Atlanta hub — Delta outperformed other U.S. carriers in the 2017 rankings, the newspaper reported on January 10.
Alaska Airlines placed second overall, followed by Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, Frontier Airlines, American Airlines and Spirit Airlines.
JetBlue Airways finished last in the 2017 scorecard. The airline’s ranking reflected weaknesses in on-time performance and a higher incidence of extreme delays, canceled flights, lengthy tarmac holds and involuntary bumping compared with its peers.
The Wall Street Journal’s annual scorecard offers a data-driven snapshot of U.S. airline performance, helping travelers compare carriers on punctuality, reliability and customer-impacting operational issues. For 2017, the results highlighted that strong overall performance can coexist with occasional, high-profile service disruptions.