Report: U.S. Airline Quality Down Last Year

(RTTNews) - The performance of U.S. airlines fared badly in 2014, after posting its best performance in last 25 years in 2013, according to an annual quality report.

According to the Airline Quality Rating report, the U.S. airline industry performed badly in all the four performance areas tracked-- on-time arrivals, involuntary denied boardings, mishandled baggage, and customer complaints.

All the 12 individual airlines in the report, except Hawaiian Airlines, Alaska Airlines and Virgin America, showed decline in performance, with Envoy Airlines reporting the largest decline in AQR score for 2014.

On-time arrival percentage dropped to 76.2 percent in 2014 from 78.4 percent last year. Hawaiian Airlines posted the best on-time performance of 91.9 percent, while Envoy Airlines recorded the lowest of 68.8 percent.

Mishandled baggage rate worsened to 3.62 per 1,000 passengers in 2014 from 3.21 per 1,000 passengers in 2013. Virgin America mishandled baggage rate was the best at 0.95, while Envoy again reported the worst rate of 9.02.

Involuntary denied boardings per passenger worsened to 0.92 per 10,000 passengers in 2014 from 0.89 per 10,000 passengers a year ago. Virgin America reported the best performance rate of 0.09, while ExpressJet Airlines and SkyWest Airlines were at the worst with a rating of 2.71.

Consumer complaint rate rose to 1.38 per 100,000 passengers in 2014 from 1.13 per 100,000 passengers. Alaska Airlines had the best rate of 0.42 while Frontier reported the worst rate of 3.91.

American, which merged with US Airways in 2013, declined in all four performance areas. On-time arrivals rate dropped to 77.9 percent from 78.1 percent, while involuntary denied boardings rose to 0.55 from 0.43 in 2013. Baggage handling rose to 3.77 per 1,000 passengers from 3.02 a year ago, with customer complaints per 100,000 passengers rising to 2.12 from 1.99 in 2013.