The Airline Quality Rating 2010 by Dr. Brent Bowen Dr. Dean Headley was released today, which quantifies airline quality in 2009 based on on-time arrivals, denied boardings, mishandled baggage, and customer complaints. The good news is that almost every carrier increased its quality ratings from 2008 (including Delta), the bad news is that Delta and some of the airlines that operate as Delta Connection are near the bottom of the list:
Code:
Airline Score Rank
Hawaiian -0.4 1
Air Tran -0.49 2
JetBlue -0.62 3
Northwest -0.88 4
Southwest -1 5
Continental -1.09 6
Frontier -1.09 7
US Airways -1.19 8
American -1.25 9
ExpressJet -1.32 10
Alaska -1.39 11
Mesa -1.42 12
United -1.43 13
SkyWest -1.57 14
Delta -1.73 15
Comair -2.22 16
Atlantic SE -2.49 17
American Eagle -2.83 18
How much of this can be attributed to the size of Delta and the mega-hub at ATL?
The report is interesting, but in my opinion, other subjective factors such as cleanliness of airplanes, all service components (reservations, website, in-flight, IRROPS, etc.), in-flight entertainment, etc. should also be considered. I suppose those are for other surveys, but it would be nice to consider them all at once for a true quality evaluation.