As travelers return to the nation’s airports after the COVID-19 pandemic, airlines are still struggling to deliver passengers and their bags to their destinations on time. That’s according to the annual Airline Quality Ratings issued by Wichita State University and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

The survey said during 2021, fewer planes arrived on time, more baggage was mishandled, and more passengers with booked tickets were bumped from their flights.   The number of complaints filed with the U.S. Department of Transportation was down significantly from 2020, but total complaints remained higher than average.

The survey listed rankings of the major airlines based on their overall performance in 2021, with the previous year’s ranking in parentheses:

1.         Southwest (1)
2.         Hawaiian (9)
3.         Delta (3)
4.         Allegiant (2)
5.         Alaska (4)
6.         United (8)
7.         Frontier (10)
8.         JetBlue (6)
9.         American (7)
10.       Spirit (5)

The survey was conducted by WSU professor Dr. Dean Headley and Dr. Brent Bowen of Embry-Riddle.   Dr. Headley said airline performance declined in 2021 because of two key problems of staffing and plane inventory.   He said airlines want to hire people but they have not been able to do it quickly.  He said the pandemic forced airlines to lay off pilots and baggage handlers, and they took other jobs.   Many airlines also put planes into storage during the pandemic, and it takes several months to get a plane back into service, making it difficult to get enough planes to meet the demand for more flights.

Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance of 90.1 percent for 2021.  Allegiant Airlines had the worst performance at 68.3 percent.

Frontier Airlines had the highest involuntary denied boarding rate at 0.95 per 10,000 passengers.  Allegant, Delta, Hawaiian and United had the lowest rates at 0.00 per 10,000 passengers.

Allegiant had the best baggage-handling performance, with 1.74 mishandled bags per 1,000 checked bags.   American had the worst performance with 8.52 mishandled bags per 1,000 checked bags.    The rate for the industry changed from 3.96 in 2020 to 4.97 last year.

Delta had the lowest consumer complaint rate of 1.29 per 100,000 passengers.   Spirit had the highest complaint rate at 11.45 per 100,000 passengers.