Spirit Airlines at Bottom of Consumer Reports Airline Ratings

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 2:23AM EST · Published Mar 15, 11:30AM EDT

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Spirit Airlines at Bottom of Consumer Reports Airline Ratings — © Thinkstock

Consumer Reports has issued its airline quality ratings. Spirit Airlines Inc. (NYSE: SAVE) finished dead last in the survey that rated both coach/economy and business/first-class experiences.

The coach/economy ratings had by far the larger sample size. According to Consumer Report:

Ratings are based on our Summer 2017 survey of 52,507 Consumer Reports’ members reporting on their experiences on 97,765 economy class domestic flights between July 2016 and June 2017. Economy included basic economy, economy, and premium economy flights. The Reader Score represents overall satisfaction with the flight experience and is not exclusively determined by factors under the survey results. A reader score of 100 would mean all respondents are completely satisfied; 80, that respondents are “very satisfied”, and 60, that respondents are “somewhat satisfied” on average.

Spirit received a rating of 62. The rating of Frontier Airlines was not much better at 63. Among the nation’s largest carriers, United Continental Holdings Inc.’s (NYSE: UAL) United Airlines finished at the bottom with a rating of 67. American Airlines Group Inc. (NASDAQ: AAL) was next up the list at 68. Delta Air Lines Inc. (NYSE: DAL) had a rating of 75. JetBlue Airways Corp. (NASDAQ: JBLU) rated 83, and Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV) was at the top of the major carrier’s list with a rating of 85.

Among smaller carriers, Allegiant had a rating of 70. Hawaiian Airlines had a rating of 80, while Virgin Air (which has merged with Alaska Air) had a rating of 83. Alaska Air Group Inc. (NYSE: ALK) topped the list of smaller carriers with a score of 84.

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For the business/first-class rating, the sample was much smaller:

Ratings are based on our Summer 2017 survey of 5,059 Consumer Reports’ members reporting on their experiences on 8,702 first or business class domestic flights between July 2016 and June 2017. The Reader Score represents overall satisfaction with the flight experience and is not exclusively determined by factors under the survey results. A reader score of 100 would mean all respondents are completely satisfied; 80, that respondents are “very satisfied”, and 60, that respondents are “somewhat satisfied” on average.

United finished at the bottom of this portion of the survey with a rating of 79. Next, American had a rating of 80. Delta topped the list of major carriers in the category with a rating of 85. Two small carriers topped the list: Alaska Air and Hawaiian Airlines both had ratings of 89.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.