This Is the Airline Americans Dislike the Most

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 12, 10:30AM EDT

This Is the Airline Americans Dislike the Most — © Daxus / Getty Images

Americans have begun to travel again as the effects of COVID-19 have become less dangerous. Some people continue to wear masks and take other precautions. However, air travel and cruise line reservations are back to pre-pandemic levels. When traveling gets crowded, customer service is at a premium. The ease with which people can navigate planes, trains and automobiles takes on extra importance.

Air travel, in particular, can be difficult. Problems run from flights that leave late, crowded planes, reservation systems that are hard to navigate to apps that do not work well. Violence among passengers has become an issue as well.

J.D. Power looks at customer satisfaction across several industries, though it is best known for its car research. Among its most recent studies is North American Airline Passenger Satisfaction. It is based on 7,004 responses collected from March 2021 to March 2022. The study measured “aircraft; baggage; boarding; check-in; cost and fees; flight crew; in-flight services; and reservation.” Each measure was made across three types of service: first/business class, premium economy and regular economy.

Customer satisfaction was hurt for several reasons. Impressions of flight crews, prices and aircraft all dropped.
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JetBlue Airways finished at the top of the lists for both first/business and premium economy. It scored 878 out of 1,000 for first/business class and 851 for premium economy. For economy service, Southwest scored first at 849, followed by JetBlue at 828.

Among all three classes, the airline that finished last was WestJet, which only got scores for economy service. Its rating was 751. This Calgary-based carrier provides service to over 100 destinations in North America, Central America, the Caribbean and Europe. WestJet also gets terrible reviews from Airline Ratings, a carefully followed airline satisfaction service.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.