Frontier came in 4th out of 10 in the Consumer Reports ranking of airlines, based on responses from thousands of respondents.

Those familiar with the way Consumer Reports rating grids may recall that they pick a few attributes and then rate them on a five-symbol scale from best (full with a dot) to worst (blacked out). To represent that in an easy way, I’m using A through F here, but just think of those letters in relative terms. It’s not graded on a curve, so (for example) C does not necessarily mean the median score.

The six things they ranked on are check-in ease (Ck), cabin-crew service (Sv) , cabin cleanliness (Cc), baggage handling (Bag), seating comfort (Sc) and in-flight entertainment (Ent.)

Ck..Sv..Cc..Bag..Sc..Ent
A…..A…..B….B…..C…..F…..Southwest…..87
B…..B…..B…..B…..B….A…..JetBlue…..…..84
B…..B…..B…..C…..D…..F…..Alaska……....79
B…..B…..B…..C…..D…..D…..Frontier…..…78
B…..C…..C…..C…..F…..F…..AirTran……...74
B…..C…..C…..C…..F…..F…..Continental…72
C…..D…..D…..F…..F…..F…..American…....65
C…..D…..D…..D…..F…..F…..Delta…....……64
C…..D…..D…..F…..F…..F…..United…...…..63
C…..F…..D…..F…..F…..F…..USAirways…..61

The scores and ranking are not a clear numerical representation of the six grades…note that Frontier and Alaska scored the same grades in all areas except Frontier had a better score than Alaska on inflight entertainment, yet Alaska scored one point higher.

Survey-based rankings are always somewhat tilted toward perception…for example Southwest’s lost bad rate is relatively crappy while AirTran’s is usually tops in the ranking, yet the reported perception was B for Southwest but C for AirTran.

Not a bad showing for Frontier. Clearly a lot of this is about perception, and Frontier should continue to do whatever they can to improve impression.