The Wall Street Journal reveals the best American airline of 2025 and a surprising restructuring in the ranking.
No one can deny that 2025 was a turbulent year for air travel in the United States. And while no airline operated perfectly (or even close to it), one airline managed to overcome the industry’s familiar challenges simply by running a more reliable operation.
On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal released its 18th annual ranking of the best and worst American airlines. Despite continued industry-wide disruptions, including staffing shortages, technology failures, weather events and network strain, the Journal named Southwest Airlines America’s Best Airline for 2025.
It’s the first time Southwest has topped the rankings since 2020 and ends Delta Air Lines’ four-year streak as the industry’s top performer.
The complete list of 2025 WSJ airline rankings is:
- Southwest
- loyal
- Delta
- Alaska
- Spirit
- United
- JetBlue
- American and frontier
How the Wall Street Journal Ranks Airlines
The Journal’s airline scorecard is not based on passenger surveys or subjective travel experiences. Rather, it is a data-driven assessment built around operational performance.
By 2025, nine major U.S. airlines were ranked based on seven equally weighted metrics:
- On time arrivals
- Flight cancellations
- Delays of 45 minutes or more
- lost luggage
- Delays on the runway
- Involuntarily Denied Boarding
- Passenger submissions filed with the US Department of Transportation (DOT)
Each airline is ranked in each category, and the airline with the lowest combined score across all seven metrics is crowned the overall winner.
Hawaiian Airlines was excluded from the 2025 rankings due to its “regional focus.” Their performance data will be incorporated into Alaska Airlines’ results following the airlines’ merger in 2026.
Why some airlines are not included
You may notice that several newer or smaller US airlines are missing from the rankings. Airlines like Breeze Airways, Avelo Airlines and Sun Country Airlines are not evaluated, not on their performance, but on the way the scorecard is constructed.
The Wall Street Journal limits its analysis to a defined group of major U.S. airlines that generate enough consistent data throughout the year in all seven operating categories. The classifications depend largely on DOT reporting, which only applies to operators that meet specific thresholds for scheduled service and revenue. Airlines that do not report complete data on each metric are excluded to keep comparisons consistent and directly comparable.
In short, the scorecard reflects operational performance among the largest U.S. airlines with fully comparable data sets, rather than a comprehensive list of all airlines flying domestically.
Why Southwest is the best US airline of 2025
Southwest didn’t dominate every category, but it performed consistently well in all of them. That balance was decisive.
According to the Journal, Southwest recorded the fewest customer complaints and tarmac delays among the nine airlines ranked. It finished second in both on-time arrivals and cancellation rate. Its lowest ranking was fourth in baggage handling.
Notably, Southwest posted a cancellation rate of just 0.84 percent in 2025, keeping it below 1 percent for the second year in a row. Only Allegiant Air performed better, at 0.55 percent. By comparison, American Airlines canceled 2.2 percent of its flights, the highest rate among the airlines included in the scorecard.
Southwest’s performance comes after years of heavy investment following its operational failure during the holiday travel period of late 2022 and early 2023. Since then, the airline has invested billions in improving its systems, people and processes, even as it undergoes major internal changes. These include a 15 percent reduction in its corporate workforce and the introduction of late-night flights and flights to Hawaii for the first time in the airline’s history.
Much to the dismay of the traveling public, Southwest also began charging for bags in May 2025 and announced it would begin assigning seats in early 2026 (which begins next week, January 27).
Despite high-profile negative press about the changes that had defined Southwest since its inception, the Dallas-based airline still emerged victorious.
Southwest Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson told the Journal that keeping cancellations low requires close coordination when disruptions begin to emerge.
“It’s very easy to cancel a flight. That’s the path of least resistance,” Watterson said.
Allegiant and Delta round out the top three
Allegiant finished second overall, buoyed by outstanding performance in three categories. The airline had the lowest cancellation rate, mishandled the fewest bags and involuntarily dismissed the fewest passengers among all ranked airlines.
Their weakest results came in on-time arrivals and extreme delays. Allegiant has said those longer delays reflect a deliberate strategy of suspending flights rather than canceling them outright, an option the airline says helps prevent passengers from being stranded.
Delta fell to third place after topping the rankings for four consecutive years. While the airline once again led the industry in on-time arrivals, its overall score took a hit due to increased cancellations, tarmac delays and passenger complaints.
Much of that decline can be traced back to Delta’s operational collapse in the summer of 2024 following a CrowdStrike software outage. Because the Journal’s 2024 rankings only included data through May, the full impact of that disruption first appeared in the 2025 results.
Delta told the Journal that it plans to regain the top spot in 2026, saying its employees “are very high on airline performance as part of our drive toward continuous improvement.”
Problems at the end of the classification
At the other end of the scoring table, American Airlines and Frontier Airlines tied for last place among the nine airlines ranked.
American’s performance in 2025 marked a sharp deterioration. Its cancellation rate rose from 1.37 percent in 2024 to 2.2 percent, the highest among ranked airlines. In no category did the American finish higher than sixth place.
The airline attributed some of its poor performance to weather disruptions and congestion at several major hubs and said investments in baggage handling and scheduling are already producing improvements.
Frontier placed last in four of the seven categories and returned to the bottom of the rankings for the second year in a row.
Other notable takeaways from the 2025 scorecard
Beyond the headline results, the Journal found that airline performance in 2025 looked much like the previous year, with a few exceptions.
- Overall airline performance remained broadly stable compared to 2024, with no major improvements or declines.
- Spirit Airlines posted the biggest year-over-year improvement, rising to fifth place despite ongoing bankruptcy proceedings and questions about its survival.
- United Airlines recorded the worst baggage handling rate with 7.07 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers, well above the industry average of 5.11. United took sixth place.
- JetBlue Airways ranked seventh, performing relatively well in baggage handling but struggling with delays and reliability.
- No airline surpassed an 80 percent on-time arrival rate in 2025. The industry average fell to 76.45 percent, and the DOT defines on-time arrivals as arriving within 15 minutes of the scheduled time.
Delays. Cancellations. Frustrated travelers. A “ban” on pajamas. Shortage of air traffic controllers. High-profile accidents and incidents. A continuing shortage of pilots. A 43-day government shutdown. In many ways, 2025 was a year defined by disruption and chaos throughout American airspace.
And yet the system remained. More than 17 million flights passed through it, roughly 47,000 each day, making 2025 the busiest year for U.S. air travel in more than 15 years. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked.
Now that the long-awaited modernization of air traffic control is underway and thousands of new controllers are expected to enter the system in the coming months and years, there is cautious optimism that some of the strain can be eased. The difference that this makes will be reflected in the 2026 classification.
For now, the 2025 scorecard offers a clear verdict. There were winners and losers, but the data also reveals a sobering message. Reliability remains fragile, passenger satisfaction remains uneven, and the margin between success and failure in American aviation remains uncomfortably narrow.
