Today, The Points Guy (TPG) released its ninth annual Best Airlines Report. Delta Air Lines was named best airline in America for the seventh straight year, followed closely by United Airlines. The Points Guy uses a weighted formula to evaluate objective data from the previous year covering every aspect of a traveler’s journey, from the booking process to baggage delivery, as well as the system for earning and redeeming rewards for future trips.
Delta continues to top the list, showing that consistency matters for travelers – while the airline didn’t necessarily score the highest in each of the four key categories analyzed (reliability, experience, cost and reach, and loyalty), its strength across all categories landed it the number one spot.
United Airlines crept its way up to second place – up from last year’s third position – topping Delta in loyalty rankings, and nearly giving the airline a run for its money in categories like onboard experience. Southwest made big strides this year, moving up two spots to third after offering the best cancellation rate of any U.S. airline and making significant IT investments to improve operations. Hawaiian Airlines came in at fourth, being a runner-up for overall reliability. Ultra-low-cost carriers Allegiant, Spirit and Frontier again occupied the bottom tier of the rankings, hindered by their myriad of add-on fees, loyalty programs that didn’t measure up, and fewer on-board features and amenities than their larger competitors.
“With changing airline policies, systemic delays and increased scrutiny on air travel, our goal at The Points Guy is to help consumers navigate the constantly changing aviation landscape,” said Brian Kelly, Founder of The Points Guy. “Our Best Airlines Report thoroughly analyzes and compares each airline’s performance to help consumers make the right choice for them, because not all airlines are created equal. Ultimately, we want consumers to know they have a choice so they can fly the airlines that best align with their needs.”
Best Airlines Report for 2025 rankings are highlighted below:
- Delta Air Lines
- United Airlines
- Southwest Airlines
- Alaska Airlines
- Hawaiian Airlines
- JetBlue
- American Airlines
- Allegiant Air
- Spirit Airlines
- Frontier Airlines
Standout takeaways include:
- Delta continues to lead in reliability: The carrier was the top-ranking airline in this category once again, despite a Crowdstrike outage last year that led to thousands of flight cancellations. However, Southwest had the lowest cancellation rate of its competitors, putting its 2022 holiday meltdown in the rearview mirror. Frontier came in last for this category, in large part due to the astonishingly high rate of passengers bumped compared to its competitors. From 2023-2024, Frontier involuntarily bumped over 17,000 passengers, compared to Delta which bumped four total, and Allegiant, which bumped zero.
- Alaska comes out on top for the travel experience: The airline edged out Delta in overall experience, turning in the best marks of any airline when it came to family-friendly policies like guaranteed seats together, free lounge access for children, and early boarding for travelers with kids. It also topped the value consumers get, on average, through a paid annual lounge membership. However, JetBlue edged Alaska out for the best onboard experience, due to its signature seatback screens, free Wi-Fi and more generous legroom.
- Southwest’s reign on cost and reach could be at risk: While Southwest continued to lead the rankings in cost and reach thanks to its vast domestic network and miniscule add-on fees, the airline’s reign in this category could come to an end next year since ending its longstanding “bags fly free” policy and implementing a basic economy fare.
- United wins in loyalty: In addition to improving in two key categories versus a year prior (overall reliability and passenger experience), United once again led the loyalty rankings, lifted by its MileagePlus elite status benefits and exhaustive partner network through the Star Alliance. While the loyalty rankings looked remarkably similar to last year, there’s opportunity for a shake-up in the year ahead, with plenty of changes in the works. For example, United recently made it harder to earn Premier elite status, while Alaska and Hawaiian are expected to launch a new joint loyalty program this summer and low-cost carriers like Frontier are adding more generous perks for frequent flyers to entice more customers to their programs.
Report methodology:
To compile these rankings, TPG does a deep analysis across the reliability, experience, loyalty programs, and cost & reach for each airline. TPG examines 2024 data from the U.S. Department of Transportation (D.O.T.), including passenger complaints filed with the D.O.T., as well as lost luggage reports for each airline and operational data. TPG also sourced international route networks via aviation analytics firm Cirium, and reach rankings were weighted 80% domestic, 20% international. Additionally, in examining the airlines’ financials and combing through publicly available fleet data, the experts at TPG were able to factor all those elements — and more — into the rankings for 2025’s best airlines report.
For all criteria, the raw scores from the data were converted into a scaled score from 0 to 10 and then weighted using the following percentages to arrive at the final score. This ensured that the calculation for each airline’s score was made relative to the performance of others — as opposed to a simple ranking system that wouldn’t accurately capture these differences.
The full list of factors and weighting was as follows:
Reliability (30%)
- Timeliness (using data on delayed flights from the D.O.T.).
- Cancellations (using data on canceled flights from the D.O.T.).
- Involuntary bumps (using data on involuntary denied boardings from the D.O.T.).
- Baggage (using data on mishandled baggage from the D.O.T.).
- Wheelchairs/scooters (using data on mishandled baggage from the D.O.T.).
Experience (25%)
- Cabin features (using data from SeatGuru and inflight amenity offerings from each carrier’s website).
- Lounges (using data on the number of lounges, number of cities and price of membership for each applicable lounge network).
- Family (using a 0-to-5 score based on boarding, perks and food/entertainment available on board).
- Customer satisfaction (using data on customer complaints from the DOT).
Loyalty (25%)
- Frequent flier (using data from our monthly valuations, elite status reports and each carrier’s website).
- Award availability (using real-time award inventory for popular domestic routes across three distinct time periods).
Costs and reach (20%)
- Route network (using the monthly average of domestic cities served by each airline from the DOT and international route networks via aviation analytics firm Cirium; ranking was weighted 80% domestic, 20% international).
- Affordability (using financial data from the BTS).
- Bag/change fees (using financial data from the BTS).
For a year-over-year comparison, TPG’s 2024 Best Airlines Report can be viewed here.
