The Wall Street Journal reveals the best US airline of 2025 and a surprising shakeup in the rankings.
Nobody can deny that 2025 was a turbulent year for air travel in the United States. And while no single airline operated perfectly (or anywhere close to it), one airline managed to rise above the industry’s familiar challenges by simply running a more reliable operation.
On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal released its 18th annual ranking of the best and worst US airlines. Despite continued disruptions across the industry, including staffing shortages, technology failures, weather events, and network strain, the Journal named Southwest Airlines the best airline in America for 2025.
It marks 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
- Allegiant
- 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. Instead, it is a data-driven evaluation built around operational performance.
For 2025, nine major US airlines were ranked across seven equally weighted metrics:
- On time arrivals
- Flight cancellations
- Delays of 45 minutes or more
- Mishandled baggage
- Tarmac delays
- Involuntary denied boarding
- Passenger submissions filed with the US Department of Transportation (DOT)
Each airline is ranked in every category, and the carrier with the lowest combined score across all seven metrics is crowned the overall winner.
Hawaiian Airlines was excluded from the 2025 rankings because of its “regional focus.” Its performance data will be incorporated into Alaska Airlines’ results following the airlines’ merger in 2026.
Why Some Airlines Are Not Included
You might notice that several newer or smaller US airlines are missing from the rankings. Carriers such as Breeze Airways, Avelo Airlines, and Sun Country Airlines are not evaluated, not because of performance, but because of how the scorecard is constructed.
The Wall Street Journal limits its analysis to a defined group of major US airlines that generate enough consistent, year-round data across all seven operational categories. The rankings rely heavily on DOT reporting, which only applies to carriers that meet specific thresholds for scheduled service and revenue. Airlines that do not report complete data across every metric are excluded to keep comparisons consistent and directly comparable.
In short, the scorecard reflects operational performance among the largest US carriers with fully comparable datasets, rather than a comprehensive list of every airline flying domestically.
Why Southwest is the Best US Airline of 2025
Southwest did not dominate every category, but it performed consistently well across all of them. That balance proved decisive.
According to the Journal, Southwest recorded the fewest customer complaints and tarmac delays among the nine airlines ranked. It finished second-best in both on-time arrivals and the cancellation rate. Its lowest ranking was fourth place in baggage handling.
Most 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 airlines on the scorecard.
Southwest’s performance comes after years of heavy investment following its operational breakdown during the late 2022 and early 2023 holiday travel period. Since then, the airline has invested billions in improving its systems, staffing, and processes, even as it navigates significant internal changes. Those included a 15 percent reduction in its corporate workforce and the introduction of overnight red-eye flights and Hawaii flights for the first time in the carrier’s history.
Much to the traveling public’s dismay, Southwest also began charging for bags in May 2025 and announced it would begin assigned seating in early 2026 (which begins next week on 27 January).
Despite the high-profile negative press over the changes that had defined Southwest since its inception, the Dallas-based carrier still came out on top.
Southwest Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson told the Journal that keeping cancellations low requires close coordination when disruptions begin to cascade.
“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 standout performance in three categories. The airline posted the lowest cancellation rate, mishandled the fewest bags, and involuntarily bumped the fewest passengers among all carriers ranked.
Its weaker results came in on-time arrivals and extreme delays. Allegiant has said those longer delays reflect a deliberate strategy of holding flights rather than canceling them outright, a choice the airline argues helps avoid stranding passengers.
Delta slipped to third place after topping the rankings for four consecutive years. While the airline again led the industry in on-time arrivals, its overall score suffered due to increases in cancellations, tarmac delays, and passenger complaints.
Much of that decline traces back to Delta’s summer 2024 operational meltdown following a CrowdStrike software outage. Because the Journal’s 2024 rankings only included data through May, the full impact of that disruption appeared for the first time in the 2025 results.
Delta told the Journal it plans to reclaim the top spot in 2026, saying its employees “set the bar high for airline performance as part of our drive for continuous improvement.”
Trouble at the Bottom of the Rankings
At the other end of the scorecard, American Airlines and Frontier Airlines tied for last place out of the nine carriers ranked.
American’s 2025 performance marked a sharp deterioration. Its cancellation rate rose from 1.37 percent in 2024 to 2.2 percent, the highest among the airlines ranked. In no category did American finish higher than sixth.
The airline attributed part of its poor showing to weather disruptions and congestion at several major hubs and said investments in baggage handling and scheduling are already producing improvements.
Frontier ranked 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 year before, with a few exceptions.
- Overall airline performance remained largely flat compared with 2024, with no sharp improvements or declines.
- Spirit Airlines posted the largest year-over-year improvement, rising to fifth place despite ongoing bankruptcy proceedings and questions about its survival.
- United Airlines posted the worst baggage handling rate at 7.07 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers, well above the industry average of 5.11. United ranked sixth.
- JetBlue Airways ranked seventh, performing relatively well in baggage handling but struggling with delays and reliability.
- No airline exceeded an 80 percent on-time arrival rate in 2025. The industry average slipped to 76.45 percent, with the DOT defining on-time as arriving within 15 minutes of schedule.
Delays. Cancellations. Frustrated travelers. A pajama “ban.” Air traffic controller shortages. High-profile accidents and incidents. An ongoing pilot shortage. A 43-day government shutdown. In many ways, 2025 was a year defined by disruption and chaos across US airspace.
And yet, the system held. More than 17 million flights moved through it, roughly 47,000 every day, making 2025 the busiest year for US air travel in more than 15 years. It was not flawless, but it worked.
With long-awaited air traffic control modernization now underway and thousands of new controllers expected to enter the system in the months and years ahead, there is cautious optimism that some of the strain may ease. How much of a difference that makes will be reflected in the 2026 rankings.
For now, the 2025 scorecard offers a clear verdict. There were winners and there were losers, but the data also reveals a sobering message. Reliability remains fragile, passenger satisfaction remains uneven, and the margin between success and failure in US aviation is still uncomfortably thin.
