America’s Worst Airline

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 26, 7:30AM EST

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America’s Worst Airline — © Looking forward (CC BY 2.0) by Cityswift

Some media and research firms rate the best and worst airlines. One released by The Wall Street Journal is particularly visible because of the paper’s 3.9 million subscribers.

The Wall Street Journal’s “The Best and Worst Airlines of 2023” includes nine major U.S. airlines. Its metrics include on-time arrivals, canceled flights, extreme delays, two-hour tarmac delays, mishandled baggage and involuntary bumping. The data came from Pulse, a data platform owned by Anuvu, and DOT data for 12 months before the publication of the rating. Based on how this DOT data is collected, some measurements started in October 2022, while others were from data that started in November of the same year.

JetBlue Airways Corp. (NASDAQ: JBLU) was the worst of the nine carriers again, as it was in 2022 and 2021 as well. The analysts wrote: “JetBlue finished last in four categories: on-time arrivals, canceled flights, delays longer than 45 minutes and tarmac delays.” JetBlue defended its performance by saying that its large operation at New York’s busy airports hurt perceptions of its service. The company told the paper, “We have the highest level of exposure to New York of any airline, and that continues to make an apples-to-apples comparison with other carriers difficult.” (Are you flying out of one of the 10 airports with the most cancellations?)

JetBlue has other problems. It is trying to buy Spirit Airlines for $3.8 billion. A federal judge blocked the deal because it would cut into the consumer choice of carriers. This could be appealed, so the buyout fight may not be over.

The Wall Street Journal did not take into account JetBlue’s merger problems or its exposure to New York airports. The airline stayed in last place as it has now for three years.

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.