Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has released its Airline Quality Rating (AQR) for 2025. The survey, now in its 34th year, uses government data to rank airlines in the US on key customer metrics: timely arrivals and departures, secure banging handling, and the rate of passenger complaints.
The 2025 ranking analysed data points from 2023 and 2024 to determine which US airline is performing best. As the only airline that improved on every metric between 2022 and 2024, Southwest Airlines made a surprising return to the top of the list after an operational disaster in December 2022 stranded 2 million passengers and resulted in a US$140 million fine.
In the past two years, Southwest has invested US$1.5 billion in winter operations, boosted its on-time performance, and recorded the industry’s lowest complaint rate of 1.71 per 100,000 passengers. Andrea Irish, assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Prescott campus and author of the AQR, commented:
[Southwest] earned the number one rank by actually getting better at everything.
Delta Airlines the biggest losers in 2025 ranking
While Southwest could boast of success, rivals Delta lost the most positions of any airline between the 2023 and 2025 Airline Quality Rating. Dropping from first to seventh place, the airline’s complaint rate tripled between 2022 and 2024 despite steady on-time performance.
An IT outage in July 2024 is responsible for some of Delta’s customer problems. The incident, caused by a failed CrowdStrike update, affected 500,000 passengers and lost the airline US$550 million in revenue and expenses.
Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines continued to perform steadily across AQR metrics, ranking second and third respectively.
However, the 2025 report highlighted a downward trend in airline service. The 2025 quality scores were the second-lowest ever recorded in the AQR’s history (excluding 2020, which was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic).
Embry-Riddle researchers highlighted that this was due to a dramatic rise in the number of customer complaints, while mishandled baggage and on-time performance rates stayed fairly consistent. The findings demonstrate that airlines in the US must double their efforts to improve passenger service to improve their ranking in the years ahead.
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