America’s Most Hated Airline

Every year, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) releases its survey of the travel industry. It has just issued its ACSI Travel Study 2025. It covers airlines, car rentals, lodging, ride-sharing, and online travel agencies. The study was in the field for the 12 months that ended in March. Each company mentioned in the survey was rated 0 to 100.

The airline industry score dropped to 74 overall in the latest report. That was down four points from 2024. The airline with the worst score by far was Frontier. Its score of 65 was down 4% from the year earlier. Only American had a larger drop, down 8% to 73.

These are the airlines included in the research and their 2025 scores:

• Southwest (80)
• Delta (77)
• JetBlue (77)
• Alaska (76)
• American (73)
• United (73)
• Spirit (69)
• Frontier (65)

Southwest’s top score was up 3%, the largest increase among all carriers included. The report indicated, “However, some indications have started to emerge that less exuberant times are at hand, as airlines cut the number of flights offered, average fares soften, and the broader economic outlook becomes increasingly uncertain.”

How the Airlines Were Scored

The scores were based on a very long list of questions that covered quality of the mobile app, reliability of the mobile app, website satisfaction, ease of check-in process, ease of making a reservation, bathroom and lavatory cleanliness, courtesy of flight crew, baggage handling, boarding experience, helpfulness of gate staff, range of flight schedules, timeliness of arrival, call center satisfaction, loyalty program, size of overhead storage, quality of inflight entertainment, quality of food and beverages customers pay for, quality of free food and drink, seat comfort, usefulness of information from the carrier, and quality of Wi-Fi.

Many people have no idea of how staggeringly difficult it is to run an airline. On-time arrivals across the industry are about 80%. “On time” is based on if a plane departs within 15 minutes of scheduled time. Maintenance, weather, and airport conditions are among the reasons flights are tardy.

Airlines are huge and carry millions of passengers a year. American Airlines serves over 350 cities. It has 130,000 employees and it has nearly 1,000 planes.

Frontier has been among the nation’s most troubled carriers. In early 2022, it tried to buy Spirit Airlines, but Spirit rejected the offer. Earlier this year, Spirit filed for Chapter 11, and it finished second to last in the ACSI survey with a score of 69.

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