Airline customers didn’t do much flying last year, but they sure had plenty to complain about.
The 2020 edition of the Middle Seat Scorecard, our annual ranking of U.S. airlines by operational performance, found Southwest beat out Delta as the best last year. American was worst for the second year in a row.
The results come with a giant asterisk: It was the most disruptive year of the jet age due to the tragedy of the pandemic. The number of flights tracked in the Scorecard was down nearly 40%. The year saw large-scale furloughs, massive financial losses, mask rules, aggressive cleaning and two bailouts from Congress for airlines.
Still, despite what could have been a reset in terms of airline operations, airlines stayed true to form: The reliable carriers of past years remained more reliable in 2020, and the poorer-performing ones still didn’t perform as well.
On the whole, without traffic jams at airports and in the skies, flights did run more punctually—the on-time arrival rate averaged 84%, compared with 79% in 2019, according to masFlight, Global Eagle ’s aviation data platform. The company provides data to the airline industry and annually has compiled an exclusive report tracking on-time arrivals, cancellations and long delays for the Scorecard. Data include each carrier’s regional feeder airlines and international flights.
