Which airline has the shortest telephone wait times?
 

Which airline has the shortest telephone wait times? Which one has the longest? Are there any polls or studies out there?

Related: many times when I've been on hold the recording said for faster service to use their live agent chat feature on their website or mobile app. The one time I tried that was when I was on hold with Jet Blue with a 1-hour estimated hold time and the chat feature quoted me a one-hour-and-15-minute hold time! But is that an outlier? In general are the chats faster, and are the staff as knowledgable?

Thanks in advance.

It depends. Most airlines prioritize calls from those with elite status and sometimes those with FC tickets. If a carrier is facing weather problems at one or more hubs or if there's an IT failure or a meltdown, wait times will skyrocket.

The airline with the shortest wait times is the airline your travel agent calls, since TAs have access to people and phone numbers that the rest of us don't even know exist. I have been in situations where my TA got me on planes that I would never have been on otherwise, even if I had been bumped to the top 1% of the regular phone queue. I gladly pay her fee, even if I could book the same tickets myself without it, for the security of knowing that this service is there if I need it.

You apparently have an excellent travel agent. Most of them aren't good.