Southwest Airlines Crowned Top U.S. Carrier for a Second Straight Year

When the 2026 Airline Quality Rating (AQR) finally dropped, the headline was unmistakable: Southwest Airlines reclaimed the No. 1 slot among the nation’s major carriers. The AQR, a 35‑year‑old ranking that leans on government data, evaluated the 2025 operating year – and Southwest edged out Alaska, Allegiant and Delta with a score of ‑0.19, the best any airline has posted since the system began.

“Southwest’s performance is a reminder that you can bounce back from catastrophe if you listen to the data and actually act on it,” said Andrew Watterson, Southwest’s chief operating officer. He pointed to two concrete metrics that helped the airline clinch the victory: a complaint rate of just 1.33 per 100,000 passengers and an involuntary denied‑boarding rate of 0.01 per 10,000 passengers – both the lowest numbers in the industry.

Those figures feel especially sweet when you recall the December 2022 meltdowns that left roughly 2 million travelers stranded and earned the carrier a $140 million fine from the Department of Transportation. In the aftermath, Southwest poured about $1.5 billion into new technology, staff training and, for the first time, a modest checked‑bag fee and a revised boarding process. The changes appear to be paying off.

Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University’s Andrea Irish, who co‑authored the AQR report, emphasized that the rating is less about flashy marketing and more about hard‑won operational data. “A negative score doesn’t mean a carrier is bad; it just means there’s room for improvement,” she explained, noting that Southwest’s 2024 score of ‑0.03 was already the closest any airline had come to a positive rating.

Alaska Airlines was the runner‑up with a score of ‑0.84, while Allegiant secured third place (‑0.99) and actually led the chart for baggage handling, averaging just 0.09 mishandled bags per 100 checked bags and recording zero denied boardings. Delta, despite a respectable on‑time performance of 79.3 % and a complaint rate that fell to 5.28 per 100,000 passengers, landed fourth with a score of ‑1.08 after a costly July 2024 cyber‑attack that knocked out more than eight million systems and cost the airline an estimated $550 million.

Hawaiian Airlines claimed the only airline with an on‑time rate north of 80 % (81.9 %) and placed fifth, while United and JetBlue fell into the middle of the pack. Spirit, now out of business, rounded out the bottom of the 2025 list with a score of ‑2.60.

What does all this mean for the average traveler? In plain English, a Southwest ticket today is statistically less likely to result in a missed flight, a delayed bag or a grumble on social media. That’s a comforting thought after the chaos of 2022, and it reinforces the idea that airline performance can, indeed, improve with the right focus on data and customer experience.