Allison Poley

This year, the winner is Southwest Airlines.

They had the fewest customer complaints and the fewest tarmac delays, and they were second best in on-time arrivals, canceled flights, and delays longer than 45 minutes.

Maybe your flight was canceled during the government shutdown, or there was bad weather that left you very delayed.

Or maybe you were on the tarmac for a really long time because of the shortage of air traffic controllers.

So this year's losers tied, and it was American Airlines and Frontier.

So both had pretty serious reliability problems.

Most improved this year was Spirit Airlines.

So despite filing for bankruptcy two times in recent years and fighting for its survival, its operations did improve.

the industry averages for on-time arrivals, cancellations, bags lost, and bumping were basically flat compared with 2024.

So that means across the board, airlines, it was basically status quo in terms of how they operated.

There were many external challenges that they faced, but for passengers, it meant a pretty consistent performance with the year prior.

We'll see what happens this year.