Best airlines report 2025: Delta tops TPG’s rankings for 7th straight year

“What’s the best airline?”

It’s one of the questions we get asked the most here at TPG.

On one hand, it can be a tricky one to answer. After all, each of us has our own personal travel preferences and needs and should weigh everything from how affordable an airline is to how family-friendly its policies are.

But we also believe there’s an objective, data-driven way to identify the best U.S. airline.

Each year, we analyze a slew of statistics, facts and results to rank the 10 largest U.S. carriers from best to worst.

Our hope: to arm travelers with the best information in deciding which airline to fly with.

The 2025 winner: Delta Air Lines for the seventh straight year.

Just as it has each year since 2019, Delta topped all other U.S. airlines when we compared each across a vast array of metrics from four key categories.

To come to our ranking, we tallied up how often the major airlines had flight delays and cancellations and calculated which carriers had the highest rate of mishandling checked bags and mobility devices.

We looked at the number of cities they served in the U.S. and internationally.

Additionally, our team of experts evaluated carriers on some of the factors frequent travelers value most: the value of an airline’s frequent flyer miles, the scope and cost of its lounge portfolio, how its family seating policies stack up and whether it has Wi-Fi — and whether that internet service is free for customers.

After months of crunching the numbers, here’s how the full results panned out.

Overall rankings and key takeaways

Delta’s seventh straight victory

If there’s a theme in Delta’s seventh straight year of topping our airline rankings, it’s that consistency matters.

Delta didn’t dominate in every category. In fact, there were plenty of areas where other airlines scored higher, from affordability to how far its SkyMiles go compared to other airlines’ award currency.

What put Delta over the top in 2025 was its strength across all the categories we analyzed, from the consistently strong, on-time airline operation it runs to the experience customers have at the airport and in their seats.

Other top takeaways from this year’s results:

• United Airlines climbed to second place in this year’s rankings. United improved in two key categories versus a year prior: overall reliability and passenger experience, where it finished third overall. The Chicago-based carrier once again led our loyalty rankings, lifted by its Premier elite status benefits and exhaustive partner network through the Star Alliance — and this doesn’t even include the recently announced “Blue Sky” agreement with JetBlue that’s set to start rolling out later this year.
• Two other airlines made gains in our 2025 rankings: Southwest Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines. Notably, Southwest jumped two spots from last year to third place in our rankings after turning in the industry’s lowest cancellation rate in 2024. It also maintained its lead on cost and reach, thanks, in part, to the lack of add-on fees it charged customers in 2024. But next year could be a very different story, given Southwest just launched checked bag fees and, in recent months, tightened up some of its most customer-friendly policies. Will those changes cause the airline to lose ground in next year’s rankings? Time will tell.
• American Airlines saw the biggest year-over-year decline in the rankings. In fact, it fell three spots to seventh overall, topping only a trio of budget airlines. That fall came as the airline has trailed top competitors Delta and United in profitability of late and seemingly been in catch-up mode to those carriers regarding high-end offerings like business-class seats, cabin features and lounges. American’s new Flagship Suites should help, but the airline also scored poorly on its handling of baggage and mobility devices.
• Ultra-low-cost carriers Allegiant Air, Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines again occupied the bottom tier of our rankings. They were hindered by their myriad of add-on fees, loyalty programs that didn’t measure up and fewer onboard features and amenities than their larger competitors. Could opportunity lie ahead? These airlines are trying, unveiling everything from first-class seats and a loyalty glow-up at Frontier to new product offerings at Spirit and a fast-growing fleet of brand-new planes at Allegiant.

Best US airlines for reliability

Since getting to your destination safely and on time are (in that order) two of the most fundamental elements of a good trip, reliability carries the strongest weight of our four categories: 30% of the overall rankings.

Airlines faced a tall task in 2024 when airports filled up with record-setting crowds, including what proved, at the time, to be each of the 10 busiest days ever at U.S. airports.

Our reliability rankings take into account:

• Timeliness: How frequently a flight on the airline was delayed
• Cancellations: How frequently a flight on the airline was canceled
• Bumps/involuntary denied boardings: How frequently an airline bumped a traveler against their will on an oversold flight
• Baggage: How frequently an airline mishandled a piece of checked luggage
• Wheelchairs/scooters: How frequently an airline mishandled a mobility device

Delta’s reliability strength compared to its peers in 2024 came despite a rough week last July, during which the airline canceled thousands of flights over several days due to a global IT outage at cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike.

But within days, the airline got back to running the on-time operation it’s historically been celebrated for.

Gains by Hawaiian and Southwest in this year’s overall rankings were due, in large part, to big bounce backs in operational performance.

2024 saw Hawaiian regain its hallmark reliability, a year after the tragic wildfires in Maui made cancellations unavoidable.

For Southwest’s part, its industry-leading cancellation rate was 17% better than 2023 and helped quell memories of its high-profile holiday meltdown in 2022.

Industrywide, the cancellation rate ticked up in 2024 from 2023 but was worlds better than 2022, when chaotic scenes at airports were rampant.

Source: U.S. Department of Transportation data

Here’s how the overall reliability category rankings shook out:

1. Delta Air Lines

2. Hawaiian Airlines

3. Allegiant Air

4. Southwest Airlines

5. United Airlines

6. JetBlue

7. Alaska Airlines

8. Spirit Airlines

9. American Airlines

10. Frontier Airlines

American and Alaska, the two lowest-ranked network carriers in the reliability category, were hindered, in part, by lower marks when it came to mishandled luggage, wheelchairs and scooters.

American also finished near the bottom of the pack when it came to handling mobility devices. The carrier’s handling of wheelchairs was part of what drew a lawsuit from the Biden administration last year.

Spirit ranked lowest in that metric, misplacing an average of two wheelchairs and scooters for every 100 it handled in 2024, according to DOT data.

Frontier improved its overall ranking by 12% over last year’s report but maintained its perennial last-place finish when it came to reliability.

It also had an astonishingly high rate of passengers bumped compared to its competitors.

Source: DOT data

To be clear: Getting bumped on Frontier remains statistically unlikely, at 0.02% of passengers who boarded flights over the last two years. Yet, during that time, a passenger boarding a flight on Frontier was 25,000 times more likely to be bumped than on Delta.

Best US airlines for the travel experience

Our experience category evaluates airlines on several factors that can make a big difference in how enjoyable a trip is with a particular airline.

In this category, we examined:

• Cabin features: What you’ll experience on board, including Wi-Fi, seat pitch/width and inflight entertainment
• Lounges: How widespread (and numerous) an airline’s lounges are and how affordable they are to access
• Family: How well an airline caters to families traveling with children
• Customer satisfaction: The rate at which passengers complain to the DOT about the carrier

Alaska Airlines topped our results focused on the travel experience this year, which were weighted at a quarter of the overall rankings.

The Seattle-based carrier edged out Delta here, turning in the best marks of any airline when it came to family-friendly policies, which evaluated features like guaranteed seats together, free lounge access for children and early boarding for travelers with kids.

Alaska trailed only Southwest when it came to the lowest rate of customer complaints filed with the DOT.

Additionally, it topped our metrics focused on the value you’d get, on average, through a paid annual lounge membership: For $795, an Alaska Airlines Lounge+ enrollment gets you access to 61 domestic clubs, including Alaska’s branded lounges, American Airlines Admirals Clubs and a handful of United Club facilities, among others.

We should note, all three of the above airlines — and their competitors — offer complimentary ways to gain lounge access through certain cobranded credit cards.

Read more: Best credit cards for lounge access

Lounges remain front and center in airlines’ battle to win customers, and 2024 brought us some of the swankiest clubs yet in the U.S. — most notably Delta’s all-new collection of business-class-only Delta One Lounge facilities that debuted in New York, Los Angeles and Boston.

Still, overcrowding remains a hurdle throughout the industry, even as more clubs — and bigger ones — have popped up. We’ve already seen Delta, United and Capital One tighten access rules this year, and it’s a safe bet more such changes could be coming.

Onboard experience

One other aspect of the travel experience where Alaska was not a leading airline: economy cabin features. JetBlue led the way there, helped by continued strength in its core product that features its signature seatback screens, free Wi-Fi and more generous legroom.

However, Delta and United were a close second and third, thanks to an onboard arms race, of sorts, involving significant investments in inflight entertainment, Bluetooth connectivity and free Wi-Fi.

Here’s how airlines fared in the full travel experience category rankings:

1. Alaska

2. Delta

3. United

4. Hawaiian

5. American

6. JetBlue

7. Southwest

8. Allegiant

9. Spirit

10. Frontier

Looking ahead, we expect to see improved scores across the board for the travel experience airlines offer. That’s because carriers are making significant investments in onboard tech, slashing or entirely cutting Wi-Fi fees and upgrading planes with better seats and premium products.

Look no further than American’s recent announcement that it will join Delta, United and JetBlue in offering free internet browsing for its loyalty members in 2026.

Best US airlines for cost and reach

How many places can an airline take you — and how much will a trip hit your wallet?

That’s the focus of our “cost and reach” category, which counted for 20% of our overall rankings.

In this section, we analyzed a few factors:

• Route network: How many domestic airports an airline served, on average, domestically (weighted 80%) and internationally (weighted 20%)
• Affordability: How far (in distance) you can fly for the money you’re paying, based on financial data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics
• Ancillary fees: How much a typical passenger pays in bag and change/cancellation fees

Southwest led the way in this category, thanks to its vast domestic network and — ironically — the minuscule add-on fees it charged customers in 2024 compared to its competitors.

But Southwest may not get the same lift in this category next year and beyond after ending its long-standing “bags fly free” policy next month and implementing a basic economy fare.

Cost

When it came to affordability, we judged airlines on how much they charged passengers, on average, to fly 1,000 miles, using fare revenue reported by carriers to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics in 2024.

Industrywide, the cost to fly 1,000 miles rose slightly in 2024 to $235.27 — up about 1% from 2023, well beneath the level of inflation.

As usual, the budget airlines — led by Spirit and Frontier — led the way in affordability based on the fare alone.

But as any traveler who has flown aboard low-cost airlines knows, the base fare is only part of the total cost you pay to fly.

While the “Big Three” airlines (American, Delta and United) collected a whopping $3.9 billion in checked bag fees in 2024, the budget carriers far exceeded their legacy competitors in terms of the average fees passengers paid per trip.

Reach

Of course, cost isn’t the only factor when choosing an airline. Where it can take you matters, too.

To evaluate airlines’ route networks, we evaluated how many cities, on average, they served each month. We looked at domestic reach and, for the first time in 2025, factored in international route networks, too — meaning airlines got rewarded for creative routes like United’s flights to Marrakech, Morocco, and Alaska’s to La Paz, Mexico.

American led the way with its expansive domestic network, according to DOT data. United led with its international reach, as shown in data provided to TPG from aviation analytics firm Cirium.

One point of interest: Though it may look like United narrowly beat American on international network, it flew much farther overall and with far bigger planes.

If you add up how many total seats United flew internationally and multiply it by the number of miles those seats traveled (a key industry metric called “available seat miles”), you’ll see that United lapped its closest competitor by tens of billions of available seat miles thanks to its robust flight offerings to far-flung destinations in Australia, New Zealand, various African countries and more.

American, meanwhile, relied heavily on its strength in Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America.

Here’s how the full cost and reach category rankings shook out:

1. Southwest

2. American

3. United

4. Delta

5. Spirit

6. Alaska

7. Allegiant

8. Hawaiian

9. JetBlue

10. Frontier

Best US airlines for loyalty

Loyalty, of course, is a category we pay close attention to here at TPG. Weighted at 25%, we analyzed a few factors:

• Frequent flyer program: How rewarding an airline’s loyalty program is based on TPG’s valuations, elite status, cobranded credit cards, partner airlines and expiration policies
• Award availability: How easy and valuable it is to redeem your rewards across popular travel times

Though American Airlines AAdvantage miles and Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles tied as the most valuable loyalty currency of any U.S. airline in our latest monthly valuations, it was actually United that won our loyalty category.

Helping United was its relative strength across many of the categories we analyzed.

The carrier’s United MileagePlus program had the most earning and redeeming partners thanks to its participation in the expansive Star Alliance. It had the most transfer partners of any airline aside from JetBlue, with which it was tied for having the third most valuable loyalty currency.

There was remarkable consistency in our loyalty category when compared to last year’s results:

1. United

2. Alaska

3. American

4. Delta

5. JetBlue

6. Southwest

7. Hawaiian

8. Spirit

9. Frontier

10. Allegiant

The only change was Alaska and its Mileage Plan program leapfrogging American’s AAdvantage program.

There are opportunities for more movement to come over the next year, though.

• United recently made it harder to earn Premier elite status.
• Southwest recently devalued both its earning and redeeming of Southwest Rapid Rewards points.
• Alaska and Hawaiian are expected to launch a new joint loyalty program in August after merging last year.
• Low-cost carriers are adding more generous perks for frequent flyers, in hopes of enticing more customers to their programs. Most notably, some Frontier Miles elite status tiers recently gained a companion pass, and elite members will soon be eligible for upgrades to its new first-class seats.