This Is America’s Worst Airline

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Quick Read

  • A recent analysis reveals that Frontier Airlines is the worst carrier in America.

  • This is based on cancellations, delays, mishandled bags, complaints, and other yardsticks.

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This Is America’s Worst Airline

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One of America’s budget airlines was just named as the worst carrier in America. In a new Wall Street Journal poll, Frontier Airlines took that bottom spot.

Every year, The Wall Street Journal publishes its airline scorecard. The latest was its 17th edition. The yardsticks were on-time arrivals, number of flight cancellations, fewest delays over two hours, the fewest mishandled bags, the fewest complaints, and the least involuntary bumping. The numbers cover the year-long period that ended in November. Most of the data came from the Transportation Department.

Delta Air Lines topped the list, as it has for four years. It was followed by Southwest Airlines and Alaska Air. Late last year, Alaska Air bought Hawaiian Airlines, which was too small to make the list.

The next worst carrier on the list after Frontier was Spirit Airlines, which went bankrupt after a failed merger with JetBlue late last year.

Frontier has received poor grades from other rankings. It finished last on the J.D. Power airline list. The OAG ranked it eighth out of 10 carriers measured by on-time departures. It ranked last among U.S. carriers in 2023 based on a study by AirAdvisor.

Some reasons for complaints about Frontier are that it charges for some carry-on luggage, checked bags, and other items. Many carriers do not charge for any of these.

Ironically, Frontier Group Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: ULCC) stock is up 125% in the past six months, while shares of Delta Air Lines Inc. (NYSE: DAL | DAL Price Prediction) are 54% higher.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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.

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