Transportation

America's Worst Airline

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Airline quality and airport quality have been plagued since the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Airlines laid off pilots, plane crews and administrators as travel stopped. They also put hundreds of planes into temporary storage. Most airlines only survived because of government loans. As heavy travel reemerged, there were too few workers, and planes had to be put back into service quickly; demand was too high for airlines to offer quality service. As travel bans ended completely, planes were full, people faced hours-long delays, and deteriorated inflight service. Winter and violent summer storms made delays worse. (These are America’s 26 worst airports.)
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Bounce looked at carrier services in the United States and overseas and ranked these airlines. As part of the methodology, on-time arrivals percentages and cancelation rates were recorded from OAG.com. Data was calculated by averaging the monthly data across 2022. Meals, inflight entertainment, seat comfort and staff service ratings were from Skytrax. Exact baggage weights for each airline vary depending on ticket class and destination. These weights often caused extra charges for passengers. Complaint figures for 2022 came from the Office of Aviation Consumer Protection.

The study was unusually comprehensive. The authors wrote: “We’ve compared 60 airlines across various factors, from the number of on-time arrivals to the quality of in-flight catering, to bring you the up-to-date 2023 Airline Index.”


Carriers were rated with a score of 0 to 10. Allegiant Air ranked last among domestic carriers with a low score of 0.74. According to the study: “Allegiant performed the worst for both reliability factors, with just 64.08% of flights arriving on time and a cancellation rate of 4.42%.”


The Allegiant business model is to fly people from northern metros to warmer cities in the south. Its top destinations by passenger traffic are Orlando, Las Vegas and St. Petersburg. The Allegiant Travel Company owns the carrier.

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